Abstract
People variably respond to global change in their beliefs, behaviors, and grief (associated with losses incurred). People that are less likely to believe in climate change, adopt pro-environmental behaviors, or report ecological grief are assumed to have different psycho-cultural orientations, and do not perceive changes in environmental condition or any impact upon themselves. We test these assumptions within the context of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a region currently experiencing significant climate change impacts in the form of coral reef bleaching and increasingly severe cyclones. We develop knowledge of environmental cultural services with the Environmental Schwartz Value Survey (ESVS) into four human value orientations that can explain individuals’ environmental beliefs and behaviors: biospheric (i.e., concern for environment), altruistic (i.e., concern for others, and intrinsic values), egoistic (i.e., concern for personal resources) and hedonic values (i.e., concern for pleasure, comfort, esthetic, and spirituality). Using face-to-face quantitative survey techniques, where 1,934 residents were asked to agree or disagree with a range of statements on a scale of 1–10, we investigate people’s (i) environmental values and value orientations, (ii) perceptions of environmental condition, and (iii) perceptions of impact on self. We show how they relate to the following climate change responses; (i) beliefs at a global and local scale, (ii) participation in pro-environmental behaviors, and (iii) levels of grief associated with ecological change, as measured by respective single survey questions. Results suggest that biospheric and altruistic values influenced all climate change responses. Egoistic values were only influential on grief responses. Perception of environmental change was important in influencing beliefs and grief, and perceptions of impact on self were only important in influencing beliefs. These results suggest that environmental managers could use people’s environmental value orientations to more effectively influence climate change responses toward environmental stewardship and sustainability. Communications that target or encourage altruism (through understanding and empathy), biospherism (through information on climate change impacts on the environment), and egoism (through emphasizing the benefits, health and wellbeing derived from a natural resource in good condition), could work.
Highlights
Climate change perceptions and beliefs are changing, globally
Drawing on Marshall et al (2018)’s framework of human-environment cultural values and that of Hicks et al (2015), who independently provided value clusters for cultural ecosystem services, we examine different meanings or values that people hold for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and organize them according to the Environmental Schwartz Value Survey (ESVS), as such (Hicks et al, 2015; Marshall et al, 2018): (1) Biospheric
We explore the influence of these psycho-cultural factors on how people respond to climate change and test each of the following hypotheses: (1) Reef Grief is affected by value orientations (2) Climate change beliefs are affected by value orientations (3) Pro-environmental behaviors are affected by value orientations
Summary
Climate change perceptions and beliefs are changing, globally. Extreme events such as flooding, and slow, relentless chronic events such as drought mean that people are experiencing, first hand, climate change impacts on the special places within which they live and work (Devine-Wright, 2013; Heimann and Mallick, 2016; Nicolosi and Corbett, 2018). It is recognized that people’s experiences with these local scale impacts provides an important impetus to review and update their global climate change beliefs and risk perceptions (Myers et al, 2012; Hansen and Cramer, 2015; Lee et al, 2015). Changes in perceptions and beliefs have been extremely slow to develop, and whilst a momentum is gradually growing, acceptance that climate change is a human-caused phenomenon, and that behavior change is urgently required, still has far to go. In New Zealand, Milfont et al (2015) profiled over 6,000 residents as: those who believe in the reality of climate change and its human cause (53%), those undecided (30%), the complete skeptics (10%), and those who believe the climate is changing but is not caused by human activity (7%) (Milfont et al, 2015)
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