Abstract
The role of religion in the environment has yet to be empirically investigated in the country with the largest atheist population across the globe. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey 2013, we examined the effects of religious beliefs on environmental behaviors in China. Dependent variables of private and public environmental behaviors were identified by factor analysis. The estimation revealed a contradictory result that most religious beliefs had negative effects on private environmental behaviors while having positive effects on public environmental behaviors. The findings suggest a religion–politics interactive mechanism to enhance pro-environmental behavior in China.
Highlights
Interest in studying the role of religion in the environment has received substantial attention for the past half-century
As can be seen in the subsection reporting the results of control variables, these sociodemographic factors are significant determinants to positive private environmental behaviors
We preliminarily assumed that these unexpected results may be linked to the personal characteristics of religious believers
Summary
Interest in studying the role of religion in the environment has received substantial attention for the past half-century. Since historian Lynn White (1967) argued that Judeo-Christianity with a domination ethic over nature had caused the ecological crisis, the consequences of the interactions between religions and the environment have been debated quite extensively in the literature (Berry 2013). With different perspectives and technical details as well as the multidimensional nature of environmental attitudes and actions, researchers have stimulated divergent results. Some researchers have provided empirical support for White’s argument (Dunlap and Van Liere 1984; Eckberg and Blocker 1989; Sherkat and Ellison 2007), while others held evidence with contrasting results (Boyd 1999; Shibley and Wiggins 1997). Greeley (1993) found that a willingness for environmental spending was negatively correlated with biblical literalism, but positively with being Catholic
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