Transcript Older High School Students and Anthropogenic Environmental

Older High School Students and
Anthropogenic Environmental Degradation:
Preliminary Findings and Policy Implications
Nick Shorr
Mentor: Baruch Fischhoff
HDGC/EPP
Feb. 5, 2003
Carnegie Mellon University
REU Supplemental Grant: NSF
1
Research Associates
• Interviewers/transcribers:
Tylesha Drayton
Vanessa Lobue
Julia Hustwit
Aria Thomases
Coders/analysts:
Ron Avraham
Irene Choi
Colleen Gault
Khurram Naik
Angeline Silver
Justin Bishop
Monica Datta
Betty Kim
Neel Pahlajani
2
Introduction: why the study
• Why civic understanding of environmental issues is a
critical question for policy
• Why older HS students are a critical population in
examining civic understanding of environmental issues
• Why questions of knowledge and efficacy are critical to
that understanding
3
Why civic understanding
of environmental issues
is a critical question for policy
4
Civic understanding of environmental issues
• The possibility of common, cultural wisdom
• Historical Background
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Mass Society Politics & Rates of Material Consumption
Early 20th c elite roots of environmentalism
1960s-70s: grass-roots environmentalism
1970s-present: Professionalization of environmentalism
• Policy views of ‘the public’
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Constituency for policies, programs, funding
Responders to, and opposers of ‘(dis)incentives’
Civic environmental concern as fear
Discovery of ‘civil society’: funding/promotion of ‘participation’
5
Indirect importance
of civic understanding
• Pro-env government programs
• Pro-env corporate reforms
• Pro-env foundation funding
• Pro-env NGO programs
All depend on the continuing monetary input and support of
citizens…
6
Env Significant Behaviors
‘Env Activism’: ‘active involvement in env orgs and demonstrations’
Non-activist behavior in the public sphere:
– ‘Env Citizenship’: ‘voting, writing to officials; signing petitions;
joining & contributing to env orgs’
– ‘Policy Support’: ‘stated approval of env regs; willingness to pay
higher taxes for env protection’
‘Private sphere behaviors’:
– ‘Green Consumerism’
– HH energy use, processing & waste disposal practices
(that a significant portion of env degrad is caused by large
institutions…)
7
Why older teenagers
are a critical age-group
in examining questions of
environmental knowledge, values and
‘efficacy’
8
Older HS students a critical population in examining
civic understanding of environmental issues
• They are old enough
– Cognitive development; Moral development (Piaget, Kohlberg, Ericson)
– ‘Emergent Adulthood’: building identity, world-view, lifestyle (Arnett)
• They are what we have in common
– Education as consistent factor in proenv values and reported behavior
– Rising tuitions and ‘the forgotten half’
– College possibilities and the growth of specialization
– The fragmentation of the mass media audience
• They carry weight
– Youth culture and mass society (Ostrander)
– The US Baby-boomlet
– The Ongoing Global Baby-boom
9
Are the young always at the forefront of
the environmental frontier?
Youth as predictor of
proenvironmental attitudes
Indications that it may have passed
(Stern et al 2000) & been largely a
cohort-effect
Innate human predisposition to
attend to other species
(‘Biophilia hypothesis’: Wilson,
Kellert)
Never underestimate the human
capacity to adapt and adjust?
US domestic faith in the young
(‘they’ll do what’s best’)
What the young want changes all
the time; and a great deal of money
and energy is spent on influencing it
10
Why questions of knowledge & efficacy
are critical to
civic understanding
of environmental issues
11
Knowledge and ‘efficacy’
in civic understanding
From Behaviorism to Humanism in Psychology
(recognition of the conscious will):
– Self-Efficacy (Bandura 1977)
– Locus of Control (Rotter 1966)
– Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior (Azjen & Fishbein 1980,
1985)
Other psychol variables mediating the will
(beyond values and attitudes):
--Awareness of Consequences
--Perceived Controllability
--Domain-specific knowledge
Emotions & Appraisal (Frijda, Lazarus, Weiner, Roseman,
Smith, Ellsworth, Loewenstein, Lerner, etc, etc.)
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A policy relevant cluster
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Concerns (what these young people are worried about)
Emotions (when thinking abt these concerns)
Values (what they care about)
Understanding of Causality
Proposed Mitigation strategies
Social-political assessment and Efficacy
How important is any of this stuff to them?
13
Methodology: what we’ve done
•Semi-structured interviews (May-August)
–The protocol: skeletal and detailed versions
–The sample
–RA’s, training, interviewing, transcribing
•Coding and Analysis (Sept-Jan)
–‘Universal’ Coding> frequency distributions
–Focal scoring> calculation of correlations
–Thematic Excerpting> identification of common schemas;
assessment of revealed knowledge
–Writing-up
14
The Protocol
• Where have you lived?what
was/is it like?
• What have been your most impt
experiences in nature?
• How is nature doing
– Around where you live?
– Around the world?
• What things that people are
doing to nature most bother or
trouble you? (freelist concerns)
– Which the most? (choice: X)
• When you think about X, how
do you feel? (emotions)
• Why is X bad? (values)
• How easy/difficult to mitigate
X?
• What are the most important
causes for X? (freelist)
– Which the most? (choice: Y)
• What are the most effective
ways to improve/slow down X?
(freelist mitig strategies)
– Which the most (choice: Z)
• Who is most responsible for
doing Z?
– How likely/willing/able to do
Z are they?
• How would Z work? (Problems,
etc.)
• Self-appraisal questions
15
Greater Pittsburgh:
Greater Access to Nature? Sanguine re degradation?
•Hilly terrain> local woods
•Merchant-artistocrat largesse> city parks
•Mill closings + env regs> much better than ‘the bad old days’
•Family continuity w rural pursuits> ongoing family traditions of camping,
hunting, fishing…
•Rel mild economic boom> relatively slow suburban growth
Hypothesis: these factors are likely to contribute to
•more positive assessments of the local present and future of nature than in
many other urban-suburban US regions.
•And, by (over)extension, to more positive assessments of the global present
and future of nature than in many other urban-suburban US regions.
16
Who
Where
Likely background
# of
Subjects
Students
Public HS
(poor, lower-middle class?)
8
Students
CMU summer programs;
Children of colleagues
(middle/upper-middle class?)
6
Employees
Kennywood amusement park
(middle/
lower-middle class?)
8
Employees
Cineplex North
(suburb;
upper-middle class?)
4
Employees
Girl Scout camp;
YMCA camp
(rural/suburb; middle class?)
4
Employees
Fast food restaurant
(middle/lower-middle class?)
4
Participants
Pittsburgh Zoo summer
program
(most from suburbs,
middle/upper-middle class?)
4
‘Patrons’
Century III Mall
Monroeville Mall
(poor/lower-middle class?)
6 17
Coding & Intercoder Reliability
• Mammoth, sprawling task of coding
–
–
–
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127 places in which coders could place codes
45 sets of codes to choose from
Number of codes in each set ranged bet 2 to 21.
Coders asked to keep track of a total of over 200 different codes!
• Low Intercoder Reliability: average of 0.362
• Emendations to coding
– Silly mistakes
– Dropped codes
– Merged codes
• Revised average IR of 0.622.
18
Number of Subjects
Distribution of Coders'
Overall Assessments of Subjects
(N=41 subjects)
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Sincerity
Feeling
Logic
Low
Med
Prior
Thought
High
Imptnce of
Env
19
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
#subjects
'How's Nature Doing...Around where you live?'
next 20 (n=29)
past 20 (n=34)
now (n=37)
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'How's Nature Doing...All over the World?'
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'How's Nature Doing...Primary Concern?'
# Subjects
past 20yrs (n=36)
next 20 yrs (n=31)
How easy/diffic? (n=34)
16
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be
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Distribution of Most Troubling Env Concerns:
Free-List (N=44, 179 concerns expressed)
Pop Growth
Disaster
Food (nuclear war, fires)
(agchem,gmo's)
Resource
Depletion
Pollution in
genl (incl
Air (incl ozone
depletion &
climate change)
dumping)
Solid waste
(landfill & litter)
Deforestation
& Green Loss
Extinction
(incl Anipain and
Invasive sps)
Water Pollution
23
Distribution of Most Troubling Concerns:
#1 Most Troubling (N=44 subjects)
Nuclear war
Pop Growth
Agchem &
gmo's
Air (incl ozone
depletion &
climate change)
Pollution, genl
(incl toxics)
Solid waste
(landfill & litter)
Extinction (incl
Anipain and
Invasive sps)
Deforestation
& Green Loss
Water Pollution
24
Ongoing Loss/Damage
I: Ok so this problem of development, do you think that its changed since you were a kid?
S: I think of merely been more aware of it.
I: Do you have a hunch?
S: It seems to be more and more development
I: And next 20 years?
S: Same thing, less forest less farm
I: little worse? considerably?
S: Little
I: Gradually?
S: Yeah not all of a sudden (M17)
**
I: Globally, how well do you think nature is doing?
S: Uh, I would say, not great. Because I don’t know a lot about it, but kind of from some
of… my mom or my brother or my dad looking up from reading the paper… it’s not
what I, like, I know emissions from big companies aren’t being controlled as well as
they should be and, you know, I’m being redundant, but, like, the cars keep getting
bigger and bigger… and like, the strip malls keep going up and things like that…(F17)
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Ongoing loss/damage
I: Have you been there [‘the rainforest’]?
S: No, I haven’t, but I like… When I was little, I used to watch the Discovery Channel and
my mom would always tape the rainforests whenever there was something on it. She’d
always tape it for me because I think it’s so beautiful and I want to go there someday.
But, if they keep burning it, then I won’t be able to because it’s going away!
[F17]
**
[S says he thinks abt env stuff 4x/wk]
I: 4 times a week?
S: Well, yeah. I mean, if I have kids, it’s “Is this gonna be here when I have kids?” You
know, when they grow up? That’s the thing that probably worries me the most. With
the way the world is going, non-nature-wise… [M18]
**
I: So pollution is like this big umbrella, it can be a lot of different things, what’s so bad
about it?
S: Its hurting the world. And everything. It is hurting us. Its hurting the animals, the
plants.
I: When you say it is hurting us, like how?
S: it is taking away…I don’t know. [pause] I don’t know how to word it.
I: If you were talking to one of your friends how would you explain how…
S: It’s, I don’t want to use destroying because it’s such a harsh word, but its like effecting
our future in a way that I don’t want to see the world go. . [F18]
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Ongoing loss/damage
I: And what about all over the world, how do you think Nature is doing now as opposed to when you were a
kid?
S: I think it’s constantly just getting…like it’s always like, you’re always hearing things about like around the
world like rainforests…and things like that being destroyed and…fires because it’s too dry…and
pollution…in the water, and oil spills…
I: Do you think that’s not just the media? Do you generally have faith that Nature’s really doing OK? Or do
you think it’s really in some kind of trouble? Or how do you?
S: I don’t think it’s in like danger of like being…wiped out, but it’s definitely harmed, like and every…every
year it’s something… …happens, something, constantly it’s like you always hear ‘oh like the ozone
layer’, things like that, being destroyed. But I think that it can take it. But we abuse it. [F17]
**
Like, it was all woods at one time, now I go up and I see houses.
What do you feel when you see this?
I see like the animals being dirted out of their homes, stuff like that.
What kind of feeling do you get?
Sad feeling, like the loss of something.
Yeah, and angry to or not really angry?
I guess a little angry, I mean how would you feel if you were kicked out your house and had no where else to
go, mauled up by machines and taken away or something?
No, but more sad, you said, right? And do you imagine the same kind of thing in Alaska or
Canada, or different?
27 open,
I don’t know, it probably will happen, there’s no where else to go so I can push up there, it seems more
more free, more nice. [M17]
I: Okay. How do you think nature will be doing all over the world 20 years from now, on the
same scale?
S: Um, [pause]….probably a little worse.
I: A little worse?
S: Yeah, because probably things like government taking natural resources and things like
that. They can only last for so long, like oil and stuff like that.
I: So you think they’ll be depleted a little bit in 20 years?
S: Yeah.
I: Okay. Are there any things that make you feel optimistic about the way nature is doing,
cause you say that it’s only going to change a little bit…are there things that make you
feel that…
S: Well there’s always people working to make it better…
I: Right.
S: And even though like…maybe I’m just optimistic because when you go out on the street,
its nice out and everything looks beautiful and there’s grass and there’s trees and
everything looks really nice. But then in the back of your mind, you know, there’s like
less trees, and less oil and less all these other things that you sort of have to think about.
So I guess, you know, some of my senses are saying everything’s fine and some are
saying, what are you talking about there’s like all of these other big problems to deal
with. [F18]
•
28
Bleak future
I: how do you think nature around where you live will be ding in twenty years? Will it
be on the same track – doing much worse, or much better? Along the way – which
direction?
S: its going down hill… its getting considerable worse.
I: yeah? What do you foresee in the future?
S: building… all buildings, all shopping malls. More roads…
I: how does that make you feel when you think about that stuff? 20
S: it sucks.
I: yeah.
S: yeah – im a nature girl. No one in my fam except for my mom is… its just horrible.
I: will it make you move away or will you stay there and just be angry or will you
become an enviro activist, or what will that do to you? to your life?
S: I’ll probably try and get away from it. id probably move to like… I mean, you can’t really
run away from it because it’s happening everywhere. And the places where you want to
work, or the things that you want to do… usually you have to move to a big city, you
have to live around a big city and big cities have nothing… theres no enviro around
there. And so sooner or later everything is just going to be big city. I mean, like… from
the future movies we’re all going to be driving around cars and theres going to be like 29
one tree left, you know?
Okay…how do you think nature all over the world has changed since you were a
child?
S: Well I didn’t really pay much attention to it when I was little…
I’m sure…
S: Um…I would imagine a little worse, just because of there’s more people now, there’s
more…like the more people the more destruction of nature, its like, I mean the whole
development thing, more development and then you’ve got more poor people too so you
have more people living on the street, and more garbage and more pollution…I would
just imagine it’s a little worse, just by that.
Okay, so what kinds of things make it worse?
S: The increase in population basically.
But what do more people create?
S: Everything, like more development, more garbage, more garbage, more pollution, cause
every person saves[sic] their own amount of garbage. [F17]
30
I: Um, how do you think nature will be doing in 20 years?
S: Where I live?
I: Where you live, yeah?
S: Um, um… I live very close to where they’re building that Mon Valley Expressway junction. So that, in
20 years, whether they have it up or not… it should start to get busier, more cars going up and down my
street. My street connects, like Camp Hollow to New England, so it’s a pretty easy way to get to Century III
for everybody. It’s a busy street already, but it’ll get a lot worse.
I: Ok, so how’s that going to change the life of the neighborhood and the life of buildings there?
S: A lot more noise pollution from all the cars. A lot more air pollution. Um. It’ll make things worse—less
animals. They’ll be less and less able to deal with all the dirty air, all the noise… disturbing all of them.
I: So, how’s that going to affect the general feeling about the place.
S: It’ll go down, it won’t be as, I guess, cozy as—I’ll feel good about being home, but whenever the
expressway gets there, it’ll really be about getting out of that neighborhood because of all the traffic and
other stuff that’s coming… I guess big businesses are—houses are being built where, like, once was a marsh
or just woods… that damages it a little bit too, but not as much as a big row of cars traveling in—with the
pollution and noise….
*
I: What do you think are the biggest influ—biggest causes of, uh, this landfill overflowing, etc?
S: Everything becoming—everything’s just packaged—packaging, there’s just too much material going into
sending out products. Not, not enough recycling is going on. So it just keeps piling up and piling up until it
becomes an extremely bad problem.
31
Reported Emotion Combinations
(N=45 subjects)
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
ar
fe
re he r
t
pu
o
+
ar
ar
fe
fe
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dn fea
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e
sa
r
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he
ge
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f
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an
sa
s
r,
es
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an ad n e r
s
th
re + o
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h
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r+
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re
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fe
pu
he ss,
ot
ne
re
d
pu , sa
ss
r
ne
ge ad
an + s
r
ge
an
32
Frequency of Reported Emotions
when thinking about primary env concern
(N=45 subjects)
Number Ss reporting
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Anger
Sadness
Fear
Other
33
Verbatim emotions
I: Okay. So which of the problems that you did list, you talked about pollution and stuff like that, which one
bothers you the most? What gets to you the most?
S: I think that any animal or any species is in danger for reasons of building or construction, or some sort of
that kind of thing where they’re leaving their home environment because they’re building something or…that
bothers me to think that…that problem bothers me the most that like, the animals are probably being, you
know…
I: So I guess that links to pollution too because with the animals in the water. How does that…if you had to
use adjectives to describe the way in makes you feel, how does it make you feel when you think about it?
S: Like edgy. Like it’s annoying. It doesn’t anger me to the point where I want to like you know, get up and
kill someone.
I: Right.
S: But it angers me enough that it bothers me, you know.
I: Okay.
S: Agitated.
34
Number of Ss reporting
Combinations of Primary Negative Emotions
(N=45 subjects)
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
e
r
pu
e
r
pu
e
r
pu
ar
fe
s
es
dn
sa
r
ge
an
ar
fe
ar
fe
s
es
dn
sa
s+
es
dn
sa
r+
ge
an
r+
ge
an
35
#Ss expressing value
Distribution of Expressed Values
(Responses to 'why is X bad?') (N=43 subjects)
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Rights of Nature Human Health
Human
and Physical Experience and
Survival
Esthetics
Human
Economic
Impacts
36
S:
S:
S:
S:
I: Ok, so why—what’s so bad about it? I know some of these are very simple
basic questions, but on an elementary level, what is bad about air pollution?
Um, in the long run, it’s gonna hurt everyone.
I: How’s it gonna hurt them?
It’s uh, long term effects.
I: What are the long term effects?
I don’t know exactly, but life span. Everyone wants to live long, hopefully.
I: Do you think it changes people’s well being when they are alive?
Yes. I think it makes them, I don’t know… [pause] I was gonna say I think it
makes them appreciate life better, but I don’t know how, so, I’m not going to
expand. [M17]
37
12
10
8
6
4
#Ss expressing
Expressed Value Combinations (N=43 subjects)
16
14
2
0
l
ea
h
ig
th
ts
ts
er
h
ig
p
Ex
R
on
Ec
r+
pe
on
Ex
Ec
+
s
ht
on
ig
Ec
R
+
lth
ea
H
r
r
pe
pe
Ex
Ex
+
H
R
+
+
th
ts
th
l
ea
h
ig
l
ea
H
H
R
38
Rights of Nature
If some of these plants or animals disappeared, why would that be bad?
Just because the plants, the animals are part of a food chain, and the food chain would like be harder for other
animals to survive if another is extinct or whatever.
Why is that bad?
Just because theyre animals, theyre part of the world, theyre part of what we see on tv or what
is it wrong?
Yeah I think so, theyre part of the world, I mean some animals have been here longer than humans have, if
someone wanted to kill off the human race everyone would be dead
they have a right to be here?
Well yeah, with everything that happened now, they’re…I think they do, just because they’ve been there, and
if someone tried to move you totally away from and not be connected to anything, then I think you’d have a
right to be there because that’s where they are.
[F16]
39
Frequency of Reasons for Negative Assessment
(N=281 utterances of 43 subjects)
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
gy
lo
no
ch
te
re
tu
na
,
ia
cr
ed
in
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hu
,..
s'
es
gr
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'p
.
40
Negative Evaluations of Fellow Citizens
(N=174 utterances of 43 subjects)
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
don't care
ignorant,
habitual,
unaware
greedy,
selfish
too busy,
shortsighted,
worry abt
other
things
lazy
need, can't
afford to
stupid,
arrogant
41
Frequency of Reasons for Hope
(N=119 utterances of 43 subjects)
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
People care
more/are more
aware
Government
Technology
Corporations
Media
42
Pervasive Blame
And twenty years from now?
S:
Probably a 1.
You think its jus going to keep getting worse?
S:
Yeah. Don’t you think?
I:
I don’t know. I think we can… Well, we’ll talk about what I think at the end, if you
want. So how possible do you think it is to seriously slow down the production of nuclear waste?
S:
I don’t think its really going to slow down, It’s probably gonna get worse because we’re gonna be
needing it. We need stuff to build to keep life going, its just gonna get worse. [M17]
I:
***
And you can just list a few…but again it doesn’t have to be one that some teacher in high
school talked about the most, or something that the newsguys…what sticks with you the
most?
I think that there’s all these big things that happen. But the most damage is caused probably by daily
use…of products and things such as… plastic bags how they get [inaudible] water pollution, and in the
air, and aerosol cans. Cars, I mean everyone has a car. And it’s just constant things, like every day that
people do it’s what really…it adds up. There’s always the big huge things like the oil spills and the
fires, but they don’t do I don’t think nearly as much damage as like people throwing things out the
window and constant daily uses of…things.
[F17]
43
Proposed Most Effective Mitigation Strategies
(N=143 strategies of 44 subjects)
recyc+consum+
reuse+carpool+
pubtran use
15%
tech+
renew+clean+
elec car+
gbucks
23%
aware + media
+ school+civic
activism
33%
laws+tax+
protect+enforce
+ pubtran fund
29%
44
#1 Most Effective Mitigation Strategies
(N=44 subjects)
recyc+consum+
reuse+carpool+
pubtran use
tech+
renew+clean+
elec car+
gbucks tech
aware + media
+ school+civic
activism
laws+tax+
protect+
enforce+
pubtran fund
45
awareness
I think… and this would be totally impossible, but… if someone had a big screen like
you’re in a movie theater, kinda like the science center has a big dome screen thing, and
you were able to put people in there and show exactly what they did and how it affected the
environment and just how what they did personally hurts the environment and how what
they did personally helps the environment… like the good and bad of what you’re doing …
the complete affect of it, and that might change them to think like, ok maybe I’ll stop dong
this, or I’ll start doing that. But it would have to be like… it would take so long, though.
And be so much to do it and then they might… its kinda like a diet, “ok I’m gonna go on a
diet” and you start doing it for like two weeks and then you just stop. It might end up being
like that, and so… I mean, I cant think of a better way then that to show the complete effect
of what it is. [F16]
46
I: So what would you say is the most effective way to solve these problems?
S: Education.
I: Mmm hmm….
S: Teaching kids from, at a early age that like…educating them that all of these
problems are like constantly happening, and maybe even giving…finding
ways and somehow including them in ….like a field trip in fifth grade to clean
like, to clean like a…a highway…I never ever got to do that and I always
thought it was such a good idea to have the kids like, learn how much litter
there is on like…a highway…
I: That is a really good idea.
S: But like you know, you don’t see that. I was ne – I’m telling you, I was not
educated at all in terms of environment.
I: Mmm hmmm.
S: I know like nothing when it comes to that area.
I: Okay, are there other ways that we can stop this?
S: There are. I mean, above education, I think that’s the first thing.
47
I: Well, so when you just talked about distress you said because you don’t feel that
you can really stop this, but try to think…is there any way that you can possibly
stop this or slow it down or reverse it?
S: Um…I guess like if I were to gain more knowledge about it because I don’t
know that much, and sort of if everybody learned about it I’m sure that there are
millions of other people that feel the same way I do that its not ok to be doing the
things that we are to the environment and that perhaps as a group we would be
able to stand up and say our rights, but I kind of feel that just as myself without
being with other people, I can say things, but I don’t think that they would really
get across.
***
S: Well, we could definitely put up brochures, or put up posters, so that people
could see…they have a really interesting thing at the zoo in Pittsburgh, where in
the monkey house, they have a billboard, but its not really, and its threedimensional, and as you walk up to it, it’s the forest, but as you walk past, the
other side of it, it’s a triangle turns into it being cut down, and then there’s
information about it that says how trees are being cut down, and the rainforest is
being destroyed, and I think something like that is really meaningful because it
shows you what’s happening, instead of somebody just saying this is happening,
its not good. I think that if you see something for your own eyes, its makes… it
has as more of an impact…
48
I: Good. One last question I want to ask you. How important are all these things to you? How
closely do you feel to all those problems?
S: Um, probably not as close as I would like to be. Um, I don’t know if that’s because I’m busy
doing other things at the moment, or I haven’t put enough, you know I haven’t consciously put
enough time into it, or I just don’t know enough to do something. Um, I think they are important
though because they do bother me. [F17]
49
Scoring
G Exper
Optimsm
Gr Conc
Knowl
Imprtnce
Camp/hike/
hunt/fish/gdn
Local next 20
yrs
Extinction+
Defor/gr.loss
Accuracy of
Cause &
mitigation
Continuity self
& kids
X freq over life
Global next
20 yrs
X 2 if #1
concern
Logic
Freq of think &
talk
+ current
C/H/H/F/G
#1 concern:
next 20 yrs
Prior Thought
Importance;
Prior Thought
#1 concern:
Ease/difficulty
of mitigation
SUM
AVG
Intensity of
expr. feeling
SUM
AVG
+ 8 Others!
AVG
50
Correlations (Pearson’s r) of scores
Imprt
GExp Opti
GCon Know Sad
Mad Fear
Health
GExp
-0.147
Optim
0.13
-0.168
GCon
0.314
0.164
-0.325
Know
0.757
-0.221
-0.002
0.32
Sad
0.222
0.09
-0.121
0.068
0.264
Mad
0.496
0.035
0.089
0.201
0.366
0.442
Fear
0.057
-0.002
0.058
-0.074
0.022
0.047
0.047
Health 0.045
-0.119
-0.13
-0.151
-0.007
0.166
0.07
Right
0.188
0.403
-0.141
0.371
0.054
0.271
0.355 0.032 -0.015
Exper
0.11
-0.181
0.164
0.252
0.349
-0.055
0.131 0.089 -0.18
Right
0.362
0.055
51
A different structure of
concern and mitigation?
Concerns
Ongoing damage or loss more than possibility of
future harm
Values
Emotions
Rights to Nature; Human Health/survival;
Human Experience/esthetics
Anger & sadness more than fear.
Reasons for
assessments
Most responsb
for mitigat
Dominance of ‘civil society’ in both negative
and positive assessments
Pervasive assignment: ‘everybody’, ‘just
people’, ‘all of us’ (civil society)
Primary mitig
strategies
Primary
challenge
Indiv/hh behaviors & ‘awareness’/communic as
much as regulation & tech dev
Habits; ‘human nature’(?); the lack of awareness
52
Policy Implications
• If it is true that
• 1) the great majority of US citizens remain sincerely
concerned about anthropogenic environmental
degradation; and that
• 2) a pivotal barrier to more widespread, lifelong
commitment to pro-environmental behaviors is a lack of
knowledge, specifically abt
A) the specific causes of ongoing env degradation
B) the specific env consequences of particular everyday
acts;
C) specific alternative behaviors w substantially reduced
negative env impacts,
• Then it follows that …
53
A much greater portion of federal funding (Environmental,
Educational and Scientific) should be allocated to
gathering these types of knowledge and disseminating
them as widely as possible.
–
–
–
–
Life-cycle Analysis
Ecological Footprint
Chain-of-Custody; Accountability; Labeling
(the importance of disaggregation)
Federal policies & legislation should expedite this wide
dissemination, and overcome limits to it.
Federal and State policies should integrate the collection and
distribution of these types of knowledge as a central
component to secondary school curriculum.
Federal and State policies should challenge and assist
students and other citizens to participate in this collection
and distribution of critical knowledge.
54
Limits to Good Intentions?
1) that most environmental degradation is not caused by ‘antienvironmental’ values;
2) that having ‘pro-environmental values’ is not of itself a guarantee
that
a) one will (consistently) take pro-environmental actions
nor b) that the actions one will take on behalf of the environment
will be the ones with the greatest positive impact, of all the ones
that might have been taken; and
3) that a significant portion of environmental degradation is caused
by institutions rather than individual consumers or households
directly. [Stern et al 2000]
55
The most important thing that policy-makers
can do is to assist in
a) making the actions of those who are
motivated to behave in pro-env behaviors of
maximum effectiveness towards mitigation;
b) making the effectiveness of those actions
more widely known.
56
• That emotions may well be necessary for
the will to become engaged, to act, to
choose, to change behaviors and habits.
• That emotions can also overwhelm and lead
to avoidance.
• That knowledge is necessary for the
engagement of the will to have the intended
effects on and in the world
57
Late adolescents as mirrors
Examining the state of concern and
knowledge of older adolescents allows us to
A) assess those states
B) gain a sense of the bases upon which they
may build any further active concern
C) assess our own society’s socialization of
our youth
58
Ongoing analysis;
future research & extension
• Excerpting + expert consultation> assessment of revealed
knowledge
• Excerpting>construction of mental models
• >Construction of survey
• Writing
• HS visits (Mar-May):
– Intro; Survey; Interviews
– Presentation of findings-so-far; Discussion
• Textbook analysis; Standards analysis; teacher interviews;
media analysis
• Radio documentary?
• National interviews & survey?
59
Distribution of
concerns, knowledge,
efficacy, etc.
Tests of
Correlation
Coding &
Scoring
Construction
Of Survey
Excerpt
Plunking
Identification
Of common
(mis)understandings
HS iv’s,
Survey &
Presentations
Construction of
mental models
60