Global activism and nationally driven recycling: The influence of world society and national contexts on public and private environmental behavior

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between an individual’s environmental behavior and the social context. Drawing upon social movement and world societal literature, the authors start from the assumption that environmental behavior has both a global and national dimension. They use the 2000/1 ISSP environment survey to test their hypotheses and distinguish two behaviors: public and private. Public behavior includes actions such as taking part in a demonstration; private behavior consists of acts such as waste separation. At the contextual level, the authors consider linkages to world society, national political opportunity structures and resources. A hierarchical regression model including 23 countries and about 24,000 respondents shows that public behavior is quite similar across countries, whereas private behavior is influenced more strongly by local contexts. As for the contextual factors, political opportunity structures have the strongest impact on both behaviors followed by resources. World societal factors offer additional insights.