Education and Environmentalism: Ecological World Views and Environmentally Responsible Behaviour

Abstract

Concern for the environment has traditionally been associated with youth. Studies in the USA over the past twenty-five years have consistently shown that environmental concern declines with age (Buttel, 1979; Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Lowe, Pinhey and Grimes, 1980; Lowe and Pinhey, 1982; Honnold, 1981, 1984; Mohai and Twight, 1987; Arcury and Christianson, 1990). Just why this is so has been a matter of some dispute; the ‘aging’ hypothesis suggests that it is due to the socio-biological aging process; the ‘cohort’ hypothesis points to the differential influence of important historical events on birth cohorts, particularly in their formative years; and the “period” hypothesis proposes that both of these processes can be over-ridden as all age cohorts adapt to changing social, cultural and economic circumstances. Both the ‘cohort’ hypothesis (Mohai and Twight, 1987; Samdahl and Robertson, 1989) and the ‘period’ hypothesis (Honnald, 1984) have received some support.A recent study in Australia (Blaikie, 1992) has offered some support for the ‘cohort’ hypothesis but has shown that the relationship between age and Ecological World View (environmental attitudes) is curvi-linear rather than linear. The strongest commitment to an Ecological World View (EWV) is to be found in a middle-aged cohort; younger cohorts hold a middle position and older cohorts have the lowest level of commitment. It would appear that this middle-aged cohort was influenced in its youth by the earlier wave of environmental concern in the 1970s, and it has either maintained this level of concern, or had it revived in the more recent wave. Today's younger generation has not reached this same level of concern, perhaps because of the differences in socio-economic climate between the 1970s and the present, and their greater susceptibility to the effects of the current recession.