Abstract
In an age of climate change, researchers need to form a deepened understanding of the determinants of environmental concern, particularly in countries of emerging economies. This paper provides a region-specific investigation of the impact of socio-economic status (SES) and objective environmental conditions on environmental concern in urban Brazil. We make use of data that were collected from personal interviews of individuals living in the metropolitan areas of Baixada Santista and Campinas, in the larger São Paulo area. Results from multilevel regression models indicate that wealthier households are more environmentally concerned, as suggested by affluence and post-materialist hypotheses. However, we also observe that increasing environmental concern correlates with a decline in objective environmental conditions. Interactions between objective environmental conditions and SES reveal some intriguing relationships: Among poorer individuals, a decline in environmental conditions increases environmental concern as suggested by the objective problems hypothesis, while for the wealthy, a decline in environmental conditions is associated with lower levels of environmental concern.
Highlights
Industrialization and the related technological development have both benefitted and acted as a detriment to humanity
We began our quest with the intent to explore the relation between environmental concern, socio-economic status (SES), and “objective” environmental conditions by using a simple t-test to compare the difference of mean values between Campinas Metropolitan Area (CMA) and Baixada Santista Metropolitan Area (BSMA)
The results indicate that the two metropolitan areas differ significantly in their environmental concern; BSMA residents are more environmentally concerned than residents of CMA
Summary
Industrialization and the related technological development have both benefitted and acted as a detriment to humanity. Most environmental concern studies originate in the U.S or Western Europe (Jessup, 2010; Meyer & Liebe, 2010; Marquart-Pyatt, 2008; Xiao & Dunlap, 2007). Vol 7, No 2; 2014 use a collection of data for different countries made available by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) (e.g., Franzen & Meyer, 2010; Nawrotzki, 2012) or the World Value Survey (Kidd & Lee, 1997), which include certain Latin American countries. We seek to answer the following three questions: 1) Are affluent households more concerned with the environment than low SES households in metropolitan Brazil?; 2) Do “objective” environmental conditions in metropolitan Brazil impact environmental concern?; 3) Is the relation between objective environmental conditions and environmental concern in metropolitan Brazil different for individuals of varying socioeconomic background?
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