The Varied Influence of SES on Environmental Concern

A large body of literature has examined the question of whether the socioeconomic status (SES) of individuals increases their environmental concern. A short answer is yes. Although the relationships are modest and differ to some degree for education, occupation, and income, studies across a variety of nations find that the SES components generally have positive relationships with environmental concern. For example, a comparison across 19 advanced industrial and former Communist nations demonstrates consistently positive effects of education, and generally positive effects of income, on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors (Marquart-Pyatt 2008). Other studies similarly document positive, individual-level associations of environmental concern with education, income, and subjective class (Franzen and Meyer 2010; Gelissen 2007; Givens and Jorgenson 2011). The association with income and occupation tends to be more consistent than that for income (van Liere and Dunlap 1980), but recent cross-national studies supply evidence of generally positive relationships. However, relationships that are positive on average in multi-country studies leave another question unanswered: To what extent does the strength of the influence of SES components on environmental concern differ across nations? The relationships may vary around the average such that some countries show no influence (or even negative influence) while others show strong positive influence. This question shifts the focus from the typical relationship among individuals within countries to variation in relationships across countries. The variation can be large. Marquart-Pyatt (2008) reports that the unstandardized coefficient for education varies by a factor of 4.6 (from .008 for Spain to .037 for Japan), and Kemmelmeier, Krol, and Kim (2002) report that the standardized coefficient for education varies by a factor of 8.3 (from .036 in Northern Ireland to .300 in Hungary). From a cross-national perspective, the size of SES differences defines a meaningful outcome for explanation and study. This idea has theoretical importance. Adopting different perspectives on the motivations for environmentalism, postmaterialism and affluence theories predict positive relationships of SES components and environmental concern, while theories of global environmentalism predict zero or negative relationships. The observed positive relationships would seem to support the postmaterialist and affluence theories. However, if the SES relationships vary across countries, theoretical conclusions may be premature – support may emerge for multiple theories once recognizing the importance of national context.1 In examining the varied influence of SES on environmental concern across countries, this study attempts to use insights from several theories and, at least to a partial degree, bridge competing theoretical arguments. The next sections 1) briefly review existing theories of socioeconomic sources of environmental concern, 2) offer an alternative approach and hypotheses that specify variation across nations in the relationship, and 3) present tests of the hypotheses generated by the alternative approach with data from the World Values Survey. Although the components of SES are not identical, they similarly reflect inequalities in access to valued social and economic resources and have commonalities in influencing views of the environment. The theoretical sections thus speak of SES in general, but the empirical section examines indicators of each component.