CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS REGARDING ENVIRONMENTAL WORLDVIEW AND VALUE
4.3 E NVIRONMENTAL V ALUE J UDGEMENTS
In this section, people’s responses to the proposed environmental worldview scale, including people’s opinions towards human-environment relation, environment-economy relation, and environment-technology relation, and people’s opinions towards the capacity and vulnerability of the nature, and the rights of animals and plants, are analysed. The specific question items are shown in Table 4-3.
Rural Area
(%) 51 villages Beijing p-value d-value Hangzhou p-value d-value
Individual’s rights prior 15.9 17.0 13.7
Public inerest prior 84.1 83.0 86.3
Personal interest prior 16.2 17.6 20.5 ・ ・
Other's interest prior 83.8 82.4 79.5 ・ ・
Note: 1. Statistical significance: ・p≤0.1,*p≤0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***≤0.001 2. Substantive significance : ・d≥0.1,*d≥0.2, **d≥ 0.5, ***≥0.8 a. Individual rights vs.
public interest
b. Personal interest vs.
others' interest
Urban Area
Table 4-3 Question items regarding environmental worldview scale
Item name Surveyed
regions Question Answer
Human-environement relation
Here are three opinions about man and nature. Which one of these do you think is closest to the truth?
1. In order to be happy, we must follow nature 2. In order to be happy, we must make use of nature 3. In order to be happy, we must conquer nature
Environment-economy
relation Economic growth always comes with
environmental destruction
1. Agree completely 2. Agree / Agree somewhat 3. Disagree / Disagree somewhat 4. Disagree completely
Environment-technology relation
Advances in scientific technology can solve the environmental problem
1. Agree completely 2. Agree / Agree somewhat 3. Disagree / Disagree somewhat 4. Disagree completely
Rural area The balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset
1. Agree completely 2. Agree somewhat 3. Disagree somewhat 4. Disagree completely
Urban area
There is a danger that earth would not be able to support the increased population
1. Agree completely 2. Agree
3. Disagree
4. Disagree completely
Rural area Same with human, animals and plants also have the survival right
1. Agree completely 2. Agree somewhat 3. Disagree somewhat 4. Disagree completely
Urban area
Animals should not be subjected to medical experiments even for the purpose of saving human lives
1. Agree completely 2. Agree
3. Disagree
4. Disagree completely Rural area
&
Urban area
Capacity and vulnerability of nature
Rights of animals and plants
Note: 1. The question items regarding "capacity and vulnerability of nature" and "rights of animal and plants" are somewhat different.
2. The specific wordings of the options to question items in rural area are somewhat different. The options in rural area are:
1. Agree completely 2. Agree somewhat 3. Disagree somewhat 4. Disagree completely
In the survey, as for the relation between human and nature, respondents in both rural and urban areas were asked to choose one opinion that they thought was the closest to the truth from
“in order to be happy, we must follow nature”, “in order to be happy, we must make use of nature”
and “in order to be happy, we must conquer nature”. Regarding the relation between environment and economy, respondents in both rural and urban areas were asked to which extent they agreed or disagreed with the opinion “economic growth always comes with environmental destruction”.
Regarding the relation between environment and technology, respondents in both rural and urban areas were asked to which extent they agreed or disagreed with the opinion “advances in scientific technology can solve the environmental problem”. Regarding the capacity and vulnerability of the nature, respondents in rural areas were asked to which extent they agreed or disagreed with the opinion “the balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset”, while respondents in urban areas were asked to which extent they agreed or disagreed with the opinion “there is a danger that earth would not be able to support the increased population”. Regarding the rights of animal and plants, respondents in rural areas were asked to which extent they agreed or disagreed with the opinion
“same with human, animals and plants also have the survival right”, while respondents in urban areas were asked to which extent they agreed or disagreed with the opinion “animals should not be subjected to medical experiments even for the purpose of saving human lives”.
According to the initial assumptions during questionnaires design, as well as referring to the beliefs of NEP, choosing “human should follow nature”, agreeing with “economic growth always comes with environmental destruction”, disagreeing with “advances in scientific technology can solve the environmental problem”, agreeing with “the balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset” or “there is a danger that earth would not be able to support the increased population”, and agreeing with “same with human, animals and plants also have the survival right ” or “animals should not be subjected to medical experiments even for the purpose of saving human lives” are
more desirable, and were named as environmentally friendly worldviews. And the opposite opinions were advocated by the traditional DSP, and were named as unfriendly environmental worldviews. The responses to these questions are shown in Table 4-4.
From Table 4-4, regarding the relation between human and nature, the author found that except a somewhat lower percent on “conquer nature”, there is considerable approval on the opinions of “follow nature” and “make use of nature”. In rural areas, the highest portion (44.8%) of respondents believe “in order to be happy, we must make use of nature”, while 15.6% of respondents believe “in order to be happy, we must conquer nature”. As a comparison, in both two surveyed cities, the highest portion of people (46.8% in Beijing and 46.7% in Hangzhou) believes “in order to be happy, we must follow nature”, and also a small part of people (21% in Beijing and 7.6% in Hangzhou) believe “in order to be happy, we must conquer nature”. To some extent, these results indicate that urban areas may more likely to hold environmentally friendly worldview than rural areas, and the opinion “conquer nature” is getting the least agreement in both rural and urban areas. There are 39.6% of respondents in rural areas that believe the opinion “in order to be happy, we must follow nature”, while 46.8% in Beijing and 46.7% in Hangzhou hold the same opinion. By the proportion test, the author found that this opinion is more acceptable in the two cities than in rural areas which indicate an environmentally friendly worldview trend in urban areas. In rural areas, 44.8% of the respondents believe “in order to be happy, we must make use of nature”, while 32.2% in Beijing and 45.7% in Hangzhou think the same. By proportion test, the author found that although there is no significant difference between rural areas and Hangzhou, people in rural areas are more inclined to hold “make use of nature” than Beijing. Regarding the opinion “conquer nature”, the difference is mainly shown between the two cities of China. People in Beijing are more inclined to hold “conquer nature” than the other two regions.
Table 4-4 Responses to the environmental worldview scale Rural Area
(%) 51 villages Beijing p-value d-value Hangzhou p-value d-value
1. In order to be happy, we must follow nature 39.6 46.8 * ・ 46.7 * ・
2. In order to be happy, we must make use of nature 44.8 32.2 *** * 45.7
3. In order to be happy, we must conquer nature 15.6 21.0 * ・ 7.6 *** *
1. Agree completely 28.9 16.9 *** * 18.9 *** *
2. Agree 46.1 44.0 45.5
3. Disagree 23.2 36.4 *** * 32.0 *** *
4. Disagree completely 1.8 2.8 * 3.6 *
1. Agree completely 30.7 21.5 *** * 18.6 *** *
2. Agree 45.5 55.4 *** * 59.8 *** *
3. Disagree 22.7 21.1 20.7
4. Disagree completely 1.1 2.0 * 0.9 ・
1. Agree completely 40.6 24.9 *** * 23.0 *** *
2. Agree 50.5 53.7 59.6 ** *
3. Disagree 8.1 20.1 *** ** 16.4 *** *
4. Disagree completely 0.8 1.2 * 1.1 ・
1. Agree completely 44.5 12.4 *** *** 15.6 *** ***
2. Agree 48.9 29.4 *** * 31.0 *** *
3. Disagree 6.3 50.9 *** *** 49.8 *** ***
4. Disagree completely 0.2 7.3 *** *** 3.5 *** ***
Note: 1. Statistical significance: ・p≤0.1,*p≤0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***≤0.001 2. Substantive significance : ・d≥0.1,*d≥0.2, **d≥ 0.5, ***≥0.8
Rights of animals and plants
Urban Area
Human-nature relation Environment-economy
relation
Environment-technology relation
Capacity and vulnerability
of nature
Human and nature relation is one of the important dimensions of NEP, and also received empirical testing in previous social surveys, such as The East Asia value survey (Yoshino, 2006) and East Asian survey on people’s sense of culture, life and environments (Zheng, 2012). In this study, it is also taken as an important content of environmental worldview. As a further reference to clarify the regional features regarding the opinion on human and nature relationship, correspondence analysis was conducted and the result is shown in Figure 4-1.
Figure 4-1 Regional feature on people’s opinions regarding human and nature relationship
According to the relative positions of the variables in the Figure 4-1, rural area and “make use of nature” are located in the right lower quadrant; Beijing and Hangzhou with “follow nature” are located above axis 2; and “conquer nature” is located in the left lower quadrant.
From this distribution, the closer relation between rural area and “make use nature” is indicated that people living in rural area tend to hold the opinion of “make used of nature”.
Beijing Hangzhou
Rural area Follow nature
Make use of nature Conquer nature
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
Axis2: Eigenvalue=1.057 (52.8%)
Axis 1: Eigenvalue=1.184 (59.2%)
Survey country or city Huaman and Nature
Regarding the relation between environment and economy, most of the respondents in all three surveyed regions showed approved responses. In urban areas more than 60% of respondents (60.9% of the respondents in Beijing and 64.4% in Hangzhou) agree completely or agree with the opinion “economic growth always comes with environmental destruction”. In rural areas, the approved percentage is even higher with 75% of the respondents agree with this opinion. A proportion test shows that people in rural areas are more inclined to give a positive response to this opinion, while in urban areas people are more likely to give a negative response.
As described in the previous content, positive response to this opinion is more desirable, thus the above analysis results indicate that people in rural areas are more inclined to hold environmentally friendly worldview on this issue compared to those in urban areas. However, recognizing the negative consequence of economy growth doesn’t necessarily indicate a more favorable attitude toward environmental conversation than economic growth.
Regarding the relation between environment and technology, most of the respondents in all three surveyed areas showed an approved response. There are 76.2% of respondents in rural areas, 76.9% in Beijing and 78.4% in Hangzhou that agree completely or agree with the opinion
“advances in scientific technology can solve the environmental problem”. In rural areas, 30.7%
of the respondents “agree completely” with this opinion, and 45.5% of the respondents “agree”
with this opinion. In Beijing 21.5% and in Hangzhou18.6% “agree completely” with this opinion, and 55.4% in Beijing and 59.8% in Hangzhou “agree” with this opinion. A proportion test shows that there is a significantly higher proportion of people in rural areas “agree completely” with this opinion; however, there is also significantly high proportion of people in urban areas that “agree” with the same opinion. However, it is noted that as described in the previous section, a negative response to this opinion is more desired.
Regarding the capacity and vulnerability of the nature, there is an extremely high portion
of people in rural areas approving the opinions “the balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset” and “same with human, animals and plants also have the survival right”. Only less than 10% of the respondents in rural areas disagree or disagree completely with these two opinions.
In urban areas, there is higher support for the opinion “there is a danger that earth would not be able to support the increased population”, by the fact that 78.6% in Beijing and 82.5% in Hangzhou agree completely or agree with this opinion. There is somewhat lower support for the opinion “animals should not be subjected to medical experiments even for the purpose of saving human lives”, by the fact that 41.8% in Beijing and 46.6% in Hangzhou agree completely or agree with the second opinion. Although the proportion test is also done, however, the results cannot be taken as reference for rural and urban comparison since the contents of the measurements in rural and urban are different. Compared to the surveyed questions used in rural areas, the questions used in urban areas are more specific, specializing in nature’s carrying capacity regarding population growth and animal testing. Although the comparison results cannot be given, the clarification of people’s opinions regarding these issues still enriches our understanding about people’s environmental consciousness in surveyed areas.
From the above analysis, environmental worldviews in rural and urban areas are generally clarified from three relations (human-environment relation, environment-economics relation, and environment-technology relation), and two opinions (the capacity and vulnerability of nature, and the rights of animal and plants). The data analysis indicated that most people in both rural and urban China are holding positive responses to the measurements of environmental worldview, except a somewhat lower support towards rights of animals and plants in urban areas. However, as the author proposed, the negative response to the environment-technology relation is more desirable and is defined as an environmentally friendly worldview. The analysis results showed that in both rural and urban areas, more than 76% of the respondents showed an
approval response to the opinion “advances in scientific technology can solve the environmental problem”. This may stem from the developing phase in present China. Science and technology are still playing an important role in China, and the opinion “science and technology are omnipotent” is still advocated by most people in China.