Do immigrants support environmentalism? – Immigrants’ environmental socialization in the United States

Abstract

As globalisation continues, heated debates over immigrants’ environmental behaviours in the U.S. have been prominent in recent years. While research has generally focused on the association between political affiliation and pro-environmental values, only a few studies have specifically explored immigrants’ pro-environmental values in the U.S. Utilizing a pooled dataset spanning 3 years (2017, 2020, and 2022) from the Cooperative Election Study and employing a multilevel model, we empirically tested three hypotheses regarding immigrants’ pro-environmental attitudes: the globalization hypothesis, the prosperity hypothesis, and the political socialization hypothesis. Our results supported all three hypotheses. On average, immigrants exhibited higher environmental scores than the native-born population. In addition, we identified generational differences, with the 1st generation immigrants showing the highest environmental scores, while the 2nd generation immigrants fell between the 1st generation and the native-born. Compared to the native-born population, party affiliation played a smaller role in immigrants’ formation of pro-environmental values. Democratic immigrants tended to be less pro-environment than democratic locals, while Republican immigrants were more pro-environment than Republican locals.