Barriers To Environmental Sustainability

Demographic Factors

Two demographic factors that have been found to influence environmental

attitude and pro-environmental behavior are gender and years of education.

Women usually have a less extensive environmental knowledge than men but

they are more emotionally engaged, show more concern about environmental

destruction, believe less in technological solutions, and are more willing to

change (Fliegenschnee & Schelakovsky, 1998; Lehmann, 1999). The longer the

education, the more extensive is the knowledge about environmental issues.

Yet more education does not necessarily mean increased pro-environmental behavior.

External Factors

Institutional factors. Many pro-environmental behaviors can only take place if the

necessary infrastructure is provided (e.g. recycling, taking public transportation).

These institutional barriers (e.g. lack of public transportation) can be overcome primarily through people’s actions as citizens. Because of this, it is important to explore how environmental attitudes influence indirect environmental action. It might be true that environmental knowledge and

environmental attitude have a more powerful influence on people’s indirect

actions than on people’s direct pro-environmental behaviors.

Social and cultural factors.

Cultural norms play a very important role in shaping

people’s behavior. Boehmer-Christiansen and Skea (1991) explored the history of

policy reactions to acid rain in Germany and the UK. They showed that the high

cultural value of the forests in Germany, along with its geographic position and

the Germans’ strong need for security and stability, led to a drastically different

approach to the problem. It would be very interesting to design a cross-cultural

study that looks at pro-environmental behavior. We would hypothesize that

cultures in small, highly populated countries such as Switzerland and the

Netherlands tend to be more resource conscientious than societies in large,

resource-rich countries such as the USA

Attitudes.

Attitudes are defined as the enduring positive or negative feeling

about some person, object, or issue. Closely related to attitudes are beliefs, which

refer to the information a person has about a person, object, or

issue.

Environmental attitudes have been found to have a varying impact on pro-environmental behavior.

Reference List

• Kempton, W., Boster, J.S. & Hartley, J.A. (1995) Environmental Values in American Culture (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press).
• Fliegenschnee, M. & Schelakovsky, M. (1998) Environmental psychologists  and environmental education: an introduction from a human ecological perspective (Vienna, Faculty University publishers). 
• Boehmer-Christiansen, S. & Skea, J. (1991) Acid Politics: environmental and energy policies in Britain and Germany (New York, Belhaven Press).

Heshan