SOCIAL STRUCTURAL AND SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL BASES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN

Efforts to explain environmental concern as a function of social struc ture have revealed some weak but reliable associations. Stronger assoc iations have been found between environmental concern and social psych ological variables including attitudes, beliefs, and worldviews. The a uthors used the 1993 General Social Survey to explore a conceptual fra mework that postulates four causal levels: social structural factors a nd early socialization experiences; general worldview and ideology abo ut humanity and the environment; specific attitudes, beliefs, and cogn itions about environmental issues; and environmentally relevant behavi or. Each class of variable has explanatory power beyond that given by other classes of variables, with the social psychological variables ge nerally adding more explanatory power than the structural variables. T he patterns are different, however, for the five behavioral indicators . Efforts to explain the structural influences as indirect, operating through the social psychological variables, were mainly unsuccessful.