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Exploring Additional Determinants of Environmentally Responsible Behavior: The Influence of Environmental Literature and Environmental Attitudes

Catherine Mobley, Wade M. Vagias, and Sarah L. DeWardView all authors and affiliations

Volume 42, Issue 4

https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916508325002

Abstract

It is often assumed that individuals who are knowledgeable and concerned about the environment will engage in environmentally responsible behavior (ERB). We use data from a large scale Web survey hosted on National Geographic’s Web site in 2001-2002 to investigate this premise. We examine whether reading three classic environmental books (Walden, A Sand County Almanac, and Silent Spring) is associated with the likelihood of engaging in ERB. Conceptualizing this activity as a formative experience and a source of environmental knowledge, we hypothesized that reading such literature would be a stronger predictor of ERB than sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., gender, education, and political orientation), general environmental attitudes (as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm), and concern about specific environmental risks. The results indicated that while reading environmental literature was a stronger predictor of ERB than background characteristics and the NEP, environmental concern was an even stronger predictor. We offer reasons for these findings and make suggestions for environmental education and future research.

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1.

1. To determine how the NEP scores for our sample compared to the NEP scores for samples from other studies, we compared our results with those of Dunlap and Van Liere (2000), who investigated the views of a sample of Washington state residents, and Floyd and Noe (as reported in Thapa, 2001), whose sample included visitors at national parks located in North Carolina. Thapa (2001) took a similar comparative approach in his study. When compared to these two groups of respondents, the respondents in our sample had higher scores for only 5 of the NEP items. More details about this comparison are available upon request from the authors.

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