Energy Conservation and Attitudes toward Technology

An exploratory survey of a small suburban community near Los Angeles investigated the attitudes and values underlying acceptance of technological applications, examined the relationship of general attitudes toward technology to conservation attitudes and behavior during the energy crisis of 1973-74, and contrasted college students with the surrounding community in their regard for technology and energy conservation. Two distinct dimensions of attitudes toward technology-utility and affect-were defined and found to relate to belief in the reality of the energy crisis and preferred solutions, but not to reported conservation behavior. Moreover, in contrast to popular images, no strong antitechnology sentiment was found among the college sample. Richard Anderson is a graduate student in Psychology and Mark Lipsey is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California. This research was funded in part by the Council of Graduate Students at Claremont Graduate School through their Small Grants for Graduate Student Research program. The authors wish to thank Stuart Oskamp for his helpful comments on an earlier draft. Public Opinion Quarterly ?) 1978 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/78/02200 17/$01.75 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.180 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 04:40:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 18 ANDERSON AND LIPSEY raise physical ceilings indefinitely, and that some individual effort in the form of behavior and lifestyle change, especially among the broad middle class, will be necessary to avoid future environmental and energy crises (Meadows et al., 1972; Mesarovic and Pestel, 1974). Faith in technology as the ultimate solution can divert attention from the need for individual commitment to a more environmentally responsible, energy-conscious lifestyle. Yet our understanding of public attitudes toward technology is based on rather sparse data, much of which is now somewhat dated. While national and regional surveys have found a generally positive regard for scientific and technological progress (Science Indicators, 1973; Taviss, 1972; LaPorte and Metlay, 1975), the complexity of attitudes toward technology is apparent in the low intercorrelations among various questions asked of the same individuals. Etzioni and Nunn (1974), in a major review of the quantitative research conducted in the last 20 years, concluded that the public was not of one mind about science and technology, and that the pattern of individual response to technology was not consistent with a single anti vs. protechnology dimension. Taviss (1972) found that a large percentage of an occupationally stratified sample from the Boston area simultaneously held attitudes toward technology that could be characterized as both pro and con. A similar pattern emerged in the results of a recent survey of California residents in which attitudes toward technology appeared to be "haphazardly organized . .. with no consistent pattern of internally coordinated opinion" (LaPorte and Metlay, 1975:125). This complexity of response suggests that attitudes toward technology are multidimensional rather than unitary. Goldman, Platt, and Kaplan (1973) found evidence to suggest as many as six independent dimensions of attitudes toward mechanization in a study of college students. While the relevance of this evidence to the broader concept of technology is debatable, it seems clear that attitudes toward technology are far more complex than the simple pro-con attitude scale usually employed in public opinion polls. The Young in Opposition to Technology The diversity of public response is also apparent in attempts to find demographic correlates of attitudes toward technology. Etzioni and Nunn (1974) in their review could find little evidence for a subpublic with a consistent, undivided positive or negative regard for technology, although there was some variation among different levels of age and education. Popular generalizations have often identified the young and wellThis content downloaded from 207.46.13.180 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 04:40:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ENERGY AND TECHNOLOGY 19 educated as those most alienated from technology (see for example, Roszak, 1968; Myerhoff, 1969; Seeley, 1969; Reich, 1970). But in spite of the imputation of antitechnology sentiment to at least some youth, there is little information on how widespread this sentiment may be, on its relationship to lifestyle decisions, or to what extent it differs from the general public's response to technology. The few attempts in this direction provide somewhat conflicting results. Yankelovich (1969) in a national survey of both college and noncollege youth discovered some ambivalence toward technology but the predominant attitude of these populations was positive. Taviss (1972), though she excluded college students from her sample, found that the young and college educated fell into both a "pure antitechnology" and a skeptical (low pro and low anti) category. The 1972 Science Indicators (1973) survey showed a more negative attitude toward technology in younger people, but a more positive attitude among the highly educated, leaving in doubt where the young, educated strata fell. LaPorte and Metlay, on the other hand, concluded from their survey of California residents that "those who are young and who identify themselves as 'liberal' form the core of potential opposition to technological development" (1972:127). Energy Conservation and Attitudes Toward Technology The energy crisis in the winter of 1973-74 provided the nation's first widespread experience with the possible implications of finite resources. Although a majority of the public apparently viewed the energy crisis as a political problem rather than an actual energy shortage (Murray et al., 1974), it nonetheless raised numerous interrelated questions about the future of America's resources, national priorities, and public policy on further technological development. Technology could be regarded as both a partial cause and a potential solution for resource scarcity, yet there are no available data on the possible link between public attitudes toward technology and public response to resource and conservation issues.2 The research reported here was an exploratory foray into the issues described above. Its purpose was threefold: first, to explore the attitudes and values underlying acceptance of technological applications in hopes of determining useful dimensions for future analyses; second, to explore the relationship of general attitudes toward technology to con2 A recent survey of California residents found that one characteristic of those alienated from technology was their great concern for the pollution that often accompanies technological implementation, but it is not clear that this relationship would generalize to concern about resource consumption (see LaPorte and Metlay, 1975). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.180 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 04:40:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 20 ANDERSON AND LIPSEY servation behavior and attitudes during the energy crisis in the winter of 1973-74; and third, to compare college students with residents of a small, urban community in their regard for technology and energy conservation.