The Role of Personal and Political Values in Predicting Environmental Attitudes and Pro-environmental Behavior in Kazakhstan.

Fatikha Agissova,Elena Sautkina

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584292

Fatikha Agissova, Elena Sautkina

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584292

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Abstract

Although it is widely accepted that personal values of Self-Transcendence are a positive predictor of environmentalism, and Self-Enhancement values are a negative one, these results are not conclusive for all cultural contexts. Regarding political ideologies, research concludes that liberals tend to be more concerned about the environment than conservatives. However, this two-dimensional take on political ideologies does not grasp the diversity of political views, which could be achieved by focusing on political values. In this research, we studied the role of personal and political values in predicting environmental attitudes and behavior in Kazakhstan, a developing country in Central Asia. Using an online survey (n = 305), we found that Security was a strong predictor of both environmental concern and New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), overshadowing the effect of traditionally accepted value dimensions of Self-Transcendence and Self-Enhancement. While Self-Direction positively predicted environmental concern, Universalism and Benevolence were positive predictors of NEP. Among political values, Civil Liberties predicted NEP positively, and had no significant effect on environmental concern, while Free Enterprise predicted environmental concern negatively, and had no significant effect on NEP. Environmental concern was a strong predictor of all pro-environmental behaviors included in the study (littering, recycling, environmental citizenship, and community action), fully mediating the effect of NEP. Based on personal and political values, three profiles of Kazakhstanis who engaged differently in pro-environmental behavior were identified.

Highlights

There is a wide range of pressing environmental issues in Kazakhstan, a post-Soviet country located in Central Asia, with a population of 18.78 million and a GDP per capita of US $9,731 (The World Bank Open Data, 2019)
Higher scores on Free Enterprise, on the other hand, decreased respondents’ environmental concern (EC). These findings partially confirm the hypotheses 2 and 3, which stated that personal values of Conservation and Openness to Change, and political values of Free Enterprise will have an effect on environmental attitudes
New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) was mainly predicted by Civil Liberties, Universalism, Benevolence, and Security—all of them tended to increase the levels of NEP

Summary

Introduction

There is a wide range of pressing environmental issues in Kazakhstan, a post-Soviet country located in Central Asia, with a population of 18.78 million and a GDP per capita of US $9,731 (The World Bank Open Data, 2019). Water levels show threatening tendencies in the Caspian Sea and Balkhash, while the shrinking of the Aral Sea, located in Kazakhstan, is known internationally as one of the largest human-made ecological disasters (Micklin, 2010; Onyusheva et al, 2018). These issues can be partly attributed to poor environmental performance of Kazakhstan which, according to the Environmental Performance Index, occupies the 85th position among 180 countries (Wendling et al, 2020). It is necessary to raise people’s awareness about the environmental issues and promote pro-environmental behavior, as well as improve the state of environmental policy in this country

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