Solving Environmental Problems Together? The Roles of Value Orientations and Trust in the State in Environmental Policy Support among Swedish Undergraduate Students

Niklas Harring,Cecilia Lundholm,Tomas Torbjörnsson

doi:10.3390/educsci8030124

Niklas Harring, Cecilia Lundholm + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030124

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Abstract

This paper explores whether value orientation (VO) and trust in the state (TIS) are linked to support for environmental intervention and steering among Swedish students in economics, law, and political science. Furthermore, we considered whether environmental personal norms mediate the link between VO and support for environmental policy instruments and finally, whether TIS moderates the link between environmental personal norms and support for environmental policy instruments, testing this on a sample of over 800 Swedish students. We found a positive link between both a self-transcendence VO and TIS on environmental policy support; however, we cannot confirm a moderating effect of TIS on the relation between environmental personal norms and policy support. Furthermore, left-wing students displayed stronger support for environmental intervention. We conclude that more knowledge on programme-specific characteristics regarding environmental values, beliefs, and attitudes among freshman students can enhance sustainability teaching intended to develop the students’ critical and reflective capabilities.

Highlights

In their seminal work “Mind the Gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior?”, Kollmuss and Agyeman [1] concluded that even though individuals understand problems of environmental degradation and value the environment, they are not always willing to engage in pro-environmental behaviour
We find that trust is linked to environmental policy support, so we confirm our second hypothesis, i.e., individuals with high TIS are more positive towards environmental policy instruments (EPI) than individuals with low TIS
Our study provides a theoretical and empirical basis for the similarities and differences between different groups of students in terms of value orientation (VO), TIS, and environmental policy support

Summary

Introduction

In their seminal work “Mind the Gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior?”, Kollmuss and Agyeman [1] concluded that even though individuals understand problems of environmental degradation and value the environment, they are not always willing to engage in pro-environmental behaviour. The collective action dilemma of environmental protection [2,3], in which individuals are unwilling to shoulder the short-term individual costs of acting in a pro-environmental manner (e.g., reducing consumption levels) to achieve long-term collective benefits (e.g., a sustainable climate), increases the demand for government intervention to coordinate behaviour to reduce harmful environmental impacts [4].

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