Abstract
A survey of the environmental world-views of undergraduate students found that their views of the environment could be reduced, as had been found by Price et al. (J Environ Psychol, 37, 8–20 2014) into the ‘as elastic’ and the ‘environment as ductile’. The ‘environment as elastic’ summarizes a range of views that focus on the unpredictable nature of the environment and its ability to recover from the impact of human activities. Unlike Price et al. (J Environ Psychol, 37, 8–20 2014), however, the basis of the ‘environment as elastic’ view is solidly based on a fatalistic/non-fatalistic world-view of this age group. The survey suggests that the likelihood of individuals demonstrating environmentally aware behaviour was strongly correlated with their environmental world-view and how their general ideological word views is conditioned by their political alignment. There was, however, a limited range of behaviours that even environmentally aware undergraduates were prepared to take now and into the future and these were correlated with their concern to adopt what might be considered to be conveniently successful life styles.
Highlights
According to the United Kingdom 25-year environment plan (HM Government 2018) the scale of human impact on the planet has never been greater than it is
The nature and extent of the problems facing the environment are relatively well known but it could be argued that there is a disconnect between individual responsibility and environmental behaviour, a separation that represents a significant challenge for environmental management at all levels (Johnstone and Tan 2015)
We focus on the environmental worldview through the lens of a set of questions developed by Price et al (2014) and define environmental behaviour only within the terms of the specific behaviours in the survey questions
Summary
According to the United Kingdom 25-year environment plan (HM Government 2018) the scale of human impact on the planet has never been greater than it is now. It is clear that any solutions to these problems will require a significant amount of actions by individuals, voluntary or otherwise, to change environmental behaviours. The nature and extent of the problems facing the environment are relatively well known but it could be argued that there is a disconnect between individual responsibility and environmental behaviour, a separation that represents a significant challenge for environmental management at all levels (Johnstone and Tan 2015). It can be argued that there is often a clear gap between the level of environmental concern and the subsequent actions implying that relationships between environmental concerns and actions is more complex than might initially appear (see for example Blake 1999; Kollmus and Agyeman 2002; Eilam and Trop 2012)
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