IDENTITY PROCESSES AND ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT - THE EFFECTS OF NATIONALISM AND LOCAL IDENTITY UPON PERCEPTION OF BEACH POLLUTION

This study examines the importance of local and national identity proc esses in predicting the perception of a threat to the local environmen t: pollution of British beaches defined in terms of European Union (EU ) regulations concerning cleanliness. Place identity and social identi ty theories would predict that English people would exhibit positive d iscrimination when evaluating both their local and national beaches an d would allow ingroup preferences to influence their estimates of beac h pollution. The study involved administering questionnaires to 347 En glish students drawn from secondary schools in six seaside resorts (th ree with 'polluted' beaches, and three with 'unpolluted' beaches accor ding to the EU criteria). It was hypothesized that degree of both loca l and national identification would predict variance in perceived leve ls of pollution independently of either the EU categorization or the p hysical evidence of pollution available. On the whole, results confirm ed this main hypothesis: subjects who were more attached to their town or their nation tended to perceive their local and national beaches a s less polluted. Traditional predictors of environmental evaluation (s uch as socio-demographic variables, environmental concern, use of the environment) did not play an important role in predicting beach pollut ion perception. Denial of physical assessments of pollution was interp reted as a strategy used to cope with the threat to place identity pos ed by the labelling of local beaches by a powerful outgroup (the EU).