ISTPP Assistant Director, Xinsheng Liu, and Director, Arnold Vedlitz, along with co-author Liu Shi, have published their article, “Examining the Determinants of Public Environmental Concern: Evidence from National Public Surveys” in Environmental Science & Policy. In the article, the authors examine the changes over time in individual-level factors – socio-demographic variables, political orientations, and personal beliefs or worldviews about human-nature relations – that drive citizens’ environmental concern in the United States. They found that political liberals, people with higher New Ecological Paradigm Values, females, and Non-Whites tend to be more concerned about environmental problems. They also uncovered some interesting findings when compared to previous studies: a positive relationship between age and environmental concern rather than the typically seen inverse relationship and little effect of education level on environmental concern which typically has shown a positive relationship.
This article was based on two research projects funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and another project funded by ISTPP and a Texas Sea Grant (also through NOAA).
Xinsheng Liu, Arnold Vedlitz, and Liu Shi. 2014. “Examining the Determinants of Public Environmental Concern: Evidence from National Public Surveys.” Environmental Science & Policy. Available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2014.02.006.
