Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

The Determinants of Environmental Behavior and Concern in Sweden and Japan

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ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

2Introduction
Environmental problems are nothing new. By the 17th century, the importanceof protecting the environment was already discussed by many knowledgeable people
and governmental officers (Dauvergne, 2009). As industrialization spread andpopulation increased, both public and private sectors began to consider environmental
degradation and natural resources, becoming aware of undesirable results which
industrial progress brought to society (Dauvergne, 2009). Recently, the environmental
movement is becoming global and internationally recognized. In 2015, for example, theParis Agreement gained a consensus on enhancing effort to reach nationally determined
contribution by decreasing greenhouse gas emission in order to tackle the uncertainty of
global climate change (United Nations, 2018).
When it comes to addressing environmental problems, Sweden is frequently
mentioned as having a good reputation as an environmentally advanced country.
Environmental Performance Index, which allows environmental policy to bequantitatively evaluated in terms of environmental health and ecosystem vitality, and tovisualize the performance of each country, shows Sweden’s prominent position (YaleCenter for Environmental Law & Policy, 2018). Compared with this achievement, East
Asian countries are considered to be one step behind. Even though Japan has the highest
score in Asian countries, still its position is 20th, which is not as high as other OECD
countries, especially compared with European countries. Based on the Environmental
Performance Index, it is safe to say that there is a gap between these two countries.
From a micro-perspective, however, how people think and act are not

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necessarily reflecting these results. In other words, individual environmental attitudes
have room to be explored because individuals are also a driving force to faceenvironmental problems and it is crucial for policy makers to track people’s attitudes.
Although a lot of studies have been done to explain them, there are few studies whichclosely analyzed the differences among particular countries. Sweden and Japan, forinstance, are often discussed regarding environmental issue as mentioned above.
However, it remains unknown whether the degree to which they are concerned about
the environment and how they act environmentally is significantly different or not. Thus,
this paper attempts to examine whether Sweden and Japan have a gap or not on theindividual level and compare determinants of individual environmental behavior andenvironmental concern, particularly focusing on demographics and personal traits.
Literature review
Environmental behavior
Environmental behavior is defined in many ways. Krajhanzl (2010) suggested
that all activities human beings do could be environmental behavior since they have acertain impact on the environment. On the contrary, human activities that affirmatively
do something in order to improve the environment should be referred to as
pro-environmental behavior (Krajhanzl, 2010). Stern (2000) also comprehensively
reviewed the concept of environmentally significant behavior, clearly dividing
environmental behavior into four types: environmental activism, non-activist behaviors
in the public sphere, private-sphere environmentalism, and other environmentallysignificant behaviors. Even though prior studies defined environmental behavior andENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

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called it in a different way, environmental behavior in general can be defined by the
degree to which environmentally conscious actions by human beings has an impact on
the environment.
Value orientation cannot be ignored when it comes to environmental behavior.
Schultz (2000) found that altruism, egoism and biosphere were latent factors that
motivated environmental behavior, which supported to develop environmental behavior
studies (Schultz, 2000, 2001; Schultz & Zelezny, 1999). The Value-Belief-Norm (VBN)
model by Oreg and Katz-Gerro (2006), for instance, contributed to the findings that
post-materialistic values affected environmental concern, and in turn environmental
behavior. Perceived threat also explained environmental concern as well as
environmental behavior (Oreg & Katz-Gerro, 2006).
Regarding demographics, years of education and gender were positively
correlated with environmental behavior and attitudes (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2010).
However, they noted that a longer education period did not necessarily promote
environmental behavior. In addition to this, a cross-national research about gendervariation in environmental behavior showed that women were more likely to act
environmentally especially in private sphere in many nations (Hunter, Hatch & Johnson,2004), which obtained similar results that Kollmuss and Agyeman (2010) showed.
Environmental knowledge is a controversial factor to explain environmental
behavior. Some studies showed that environmental knowledge did not have a direct
influence on environmental behavior (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2010). A comparative
study about environmental behavior, knowledge, and attitudes presented that

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environmental knowledge took a role of a bridge between environmental attitude andbehavior (Arbuthnot & Lingg, 1975), which might be one way to explain environmental
knowledge in connection with behavior.
Environmental Concern
Environmental concern is often defined as recognition of environmental
problems, including to make effort to address them (Dunlap & Jones, 2002). The
definition has two dimensions. One is reasonable perception of environmental issues,and the other is willingness to take actions.
Many studies have been done since the 1970s regarding environmental
concern (Marquart-Pyatt, 2012) to find out which demographic factors predict it.
Franzen and Vogl (2013) examined cross-national environmental concern from 1993 to2010, discussing that wealth explained environmental concern to a great extent. The
result of determinants of environmental concern also showed that education was themost influential factor. Marquart-Pyatt (2012) also demonstrated that not only
demographics such as age, gender, education and income but also environmental
knowledge were explanatory predictors to environmental concern especially on theindividual-level. At the country level, economic, political, and environmental factors
were key determinants.
Tam and Chan (2018) examined the gap between environmental concern andenvironmental behavior, showing that those who were concerned about the environment
were not acting accordingly because they were afraid of free riders. It should beremarked that generalized trust was strongly associated with the relationship of these

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ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

two, meaning that high trustworthiness in people narrowed the gap between the concern
and behavior.
By reviewing previous studies, it can be implied that demographic factors area focal point of both environmental behavior and concern even though environmental
knowledge and education are particularly open to question. Moreover, the connection
between environmental behavior and concern remains to be discussed.
MethodBy employing secondary data from the International Survey Programme(ISSP) 2010, environmental concern and environmental behavior were examined.
First, a one-way ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the difference between
Sweden and Japan in each case of environmental behavior and concern. Next, multiple
linear regression analyses were performed to examine how the two dependent variables,
environmental concern and environmental behavior, were explained by the following
independent variables: age, gender, place of living, marital status, educational level,
environmental

knowledge,

environmentalorganization,

party

affiliation,

post-materialistic attitudes, trust in people, trust in government, and perceived threat.
In this study, environmental behavior was created by calculating the mean of
the following seven items: 1) How often do you make a special effort to sort glass ortins or plastic or newspapers and so on for recycling?, 2) How often do you make aspecial effort to buy fruit and vegetables grown without pesticides or chemicals?, 3)
How often do you cut back on driving a car for environmental reasons?, 4) How often
do you reduce the energy or fuel you use at home for environmental reasons?, 5) HowENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

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often do you choose to save or re-use water for environmental reasons?, and 6) How
often do you avoid buying certain products for environmental reasons? The Cronbach’s
alpha was 0.714 in the Swedish case and 0.737 in the Japanese case, suggesting that themeasure was adequate.
Environmental concern was measured by computing the mean of following
nine items: 1) I do what is right for the environment, even when it costs more money ortakes more time, 2) How willing would you be to accept cuts in your standard of living
in order to protect the environment?, 3) How willing would you be to pay much higher
prices in order to protect the environment?, 4) How willing would you be to pay muchhigher taxes in order to protect the environment?, 5) Modern science will solve ourenvironmental problems with little change to our way of living, 6) People worry too
much about human progress harming the environment, 7) We worry too much about the
future of the environment and not enough about prices and jobs, 8) It is just too difficult
for someone like me to do much about the environment, and 9) In order to protect theenvironment the country needs economic growth (Note: Items 1, 2, 3 & 4 werereverse-scored). The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.771 and 0.707 respectively each for
Swedish and Japanese case, suggesting again that the measure was adequate.
Result and Discussion
One-way ANOVA
There was a statistically significant difference between Sweden and Japan asdetermined by a one-way ANOVA (F(1, 2486) = 85.176 p = .000) in the case ofenvironmental behavior. The results of the ANOVA also indicated there was no

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ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

significant difference in environmental concern between the two nations (F(1, 2018) =2.436, p = .119). Thus, results suggested that in terms of environmental behavior,
Japanese

people(M=2.4572,

SD=.59121)

werelikely

to

act

in

a

more

environmentally-friendly way compared to Swedish people (M=2.2451, SD=.55043).
On the other hand, environmental concern was not significantly different (See Tables 1
and 2).
This result is intriguing because Sweden, as a country, performs better thanJapan on the Environmental Performance Index 2018 (Yale Center for Environmental
Law & Policy, 2018). Therefore, it is possible that there is no clear relationship between
a country’s performance and individual efforts, at least in the Swedish and Japanese
case.
Table 1. Result of one-way ANOVA analysis of environmental behavior between
Sweden and Japan

Table 2. Result of one-way ANOVA analysis of environmental concern between
Sweden and Japan

Demographic characteristics
Age had positive influences on both environmental behavior and concern in
Sweden and Japan except for environmental concern in the Swedish case (see Table 3).

ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

9This means that the older people are, the more they are likely to concern about theenvironment and act environmentally.
Table 3 indicated that females were more likely to have environmentallyfriendly attitudes. Previous studies showed the same tendencies (Hunter, Hatch, &Johnson, 2004; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2010). Given the fact that environmental
behavior particularly measures environmental behavior in private sphere in this study,
the result is strongly supported by the findings by Hunter et al. (2004).
When it comes to place of living, it was not significant. Table 3 implies thatliving in city or countryside does not have a connection with environmental behavior
and concern.
Marital status was significant only in environmental behavior in Sweden. This
result means that married persons are less likely to do environmental actions. However,Japanese samples do not have married status section, which makes comparison
infeasible.
As Table 3 suggested, education did not predict environmental behavior eventhough higher secondary and university degree had a positive influence on
environmental concern in Japan. In terms of environmental behavior, the result isagainst the findings from international surveys (Franzen & Vogl, 2012, 2013;
Marquart-Pyatt, 2012). However, as it is mentioned in literature review, education is nota stable predictor. Overall, education did not affect environmental behavior in the
Swedish and Japanese cases.
Personal traits

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As some prior studies found that even though environmental knowledge was
not a directly predicting environmental behavior (Arbuthnot & Lingg, 1975;
Marquart-Pyatt, 2012; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2010), Table 3 suggested thatenvironmental knowledge was an explanatory variable to environmental behavior andconcern. However, it should be examined by specifically paying attention to therelationship among those environmental knowledge, behavior and concern, considering
the controversial discussion about how environmental knowledge affects thesedependent variables.
Environmental organization was not significant. Table 3 suggested thatbelonging to environmental organization did not necessarily lead people to think about
the environment and behave in an environmentally-friendly way.
Party affiliation was the one which showed different effect in environmental
behavior in each country. In Sweden, those who supported left, center left, center andliberal party did not tend to make effort to the environment whereas Japanese who hadthese preferences were more likely to act environmentally. According to Franzen andVogl (2013), right party supporters had higher interest in economy and business overenvironmental issues. However, this result pointed out that those who support left party
did not necessarily prioritize environmental issues.
Post-materialistic attitudes were not significant in both cases in Sweden andJapan. Although Oreg and Katz-Gerro (2006) found positive connection with post
materialism, environmental concern and behavior, their studies took many countries
into account, including developing countries. Moreover, this result was also against

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Inglehart’s post materialism hypothesis (1997). An explanation why post materialistic
attitudes did not predict the dependent variables is that this study only compared only
two developed nations.
Trust in people and trust in government did not affect environmental behavior
in both countries. However, environmental concern was explained by trust in people inboth cases. Even though Schultz (2000) referred that altruism motivated environmental
behavior, Table 3 showed that it was influential only on environmental concern. Thisimplies that not only altruism, but also egoism and biosphere should be taken into
account in order to predict environmental behavior.
In both dependent variables, perceived threat showed significant effect. In
other words, people who recognized environmental threat were likely to concern about
the environment and made effort to do something as the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN)
suggested that perceived threat affected positively environmental behavior (Oreg &Katz-Gerro, 2006). Also Table 3 indicated that perceived threat had an influence on
environmental concern as well.

ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

Table 3. Determinants of environmental behavior and concern* p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001

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ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR AND CONCERN

13*Japanese samples did not have data of marital status, intermediate secondary,and environmental organization.
Conclusion
Overall, this paper aimed to reveal and compare determinants ofenvironmental behavior and concern in Sweden and Japan at the individual-level. The
results found that there was no significant difference between Sweden and Japan interms of environmental concern while environmental behavior was significantly
different. Unlike the country-level performance (Yale Center for Environmental Law &Policy, 2018), this paper revealed Japanese people were more likely to act
environmentally than Swedish people. Moreover, multiple regression analyses
suggested that females, those with more environmental knowledge, and those who
perceived environmental threat were strong predictors in both nations. Paradoxically,
however, education was not significant except for the case of environmental concern inJapan. Thus, the relationship between environmental knowledge and education remain
to be examined in future research. Although party affiliation (left) predicted thedependent variables negatively in Sweden and positively in Japan, it has room to be
explored more by taking specific party preferences into account. The results andanalyses clearly indicate that it is crucial for individuals and policy makers in Sweden
and Japan to place an importance on environmental knowledge to promote individual
environmental behavior. Hence, future work should explore the effects ofenvironmental knowledge in relation to education and the connection between
environmental behavior and concern also should be analyzed.

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