S TRUCTURAL C OMPONENTS OF E NVIRONMENTAL C ONSCIOUSNESS

After clarifying the concept and the formation process of environmental conscious, in this section, the detailed contents of each part of the theoretical framework of this study will be discussed. As described in the previous section, environmental consciousness is shaped by the social structures in where individuals are living, determined by personal cognition and attributes, and affected by the objective environmental condition. In this study, three key dimension of environmental consciousness, including environmental worldview, environmental attitude and behaviour intention are clarified. And the discussion on the behaviour dimension is excluded from this study, which is different from previous behaviour-centered researches. As an important link between social structure and social psychological variables, the influence of demographic factors to the formation of environmental consciousness is also carefully analysed in this study (see Figure 2-1).

Figure 2-1 Structural components of environmental consciousness

Numerous studies over the last two decades have examined the associations between environmentalism and standard social structural categories (Dietz et al., 1998), such as age, gender, education experience, household income, political and religious affiliations, and place of residence. Previous research mainly focused on the influence of demographic factors to environmental behaviour, and conclusions showed that the younger generation, women, and those with higher social class (indicated by higher education, income, and occupational prestige) are more inclined to behave environmentally. As people’s inherent social attribute, demographic factors are supposed to have substantial influence on all psychological variables. In the theoretical framework of this study, demographic factors are deemed as the links between social structural and social psychological variables. The inclusion of demographic factors into the theoretical framework of environmental consciousness is supposed to be important, since they emphasize the effects of the social structure in shaping people’s psychological variables. In this study, gender, age, education and income are selected, and their influences to the formation of

environmental consciousness on three dimensions are analysed in detail respectively.

Environmental worldview is the first dimension of environmental consciousness and also is considered as the fundamental factor in creating an attitude and an action. The NEP scale has been typically used in previous research to measure people’s worldview towards the environment. It concerns people’s value judgments on a range of environmental issues, such as, pollution, population and natural resources. Taking the NEP scale as well as its variation in previous research, this study also forms a scale to measure people’s value judgments regarding the relationship between humans and nature, economic growth and environmental destructions, the role of technology in solving environmental problems, and people’s opinions about the capacity and vulnerability of nature and the rights of animals and plants. By this measurement, this study tries to clarify people’s primitive beliefs toward the environment from different perspectives.

Environmental attitude, which deals with the cognitive and emotional dimension of people’s cognition, is the second important dimension of environmental consciousness. The ability to recognize environmental problems when they arise and the perception of consequences in general or around a particular issue are the important features of environmentally concerned citizen. In the attitude dimension, people’s cognitions regaining the severity of some environmental issues, people’s environmental sensitivity to environmental quality and its change, as well as people’s environmental anxiety and responsibility judgment are analysed. From the cognitive and affective perspectives, and based on the above indicators, this study formed a set of items to measure people’s attitude towards the environment.

Behaviour intention, which is deemed as the most closely linked to the behaviour and the most important immediate determinant of a specific behaviour, is the third important dimension of environmental consciousness. Self-interest is traditionally identified as a major source of

environmental problems. The formation of altruistic or self-sacrificing motives is particularly important in leading people to behave in an environmentally conscious way. In the study, an indicator named as the “willingness to sacrifice” (WTS) for the environment is used to measure people’s sacrificial willingness towards the environment. Furthermore, the motivations underline several activities in daily life are also examined in the behaviour intention dimension.

By these analyses, this study tries to clarify how hard people are willing to try, and how much of an effort they are planning to exert, in order to help the environment.

As described previously, predicting environmental behaviours is the main goal of previous research. However, the discussion on the formation of behaviour is excluded from this study, but the clarification of three dimensions of environmental consciousness is emphasized. Yet it is should be noted that environmental consciousness does not determine behaviour in any one-to-one fashion, but is combined with situational factors, such as cost and opportunity, to become an indicator of behaviour.

The above elaborations shaped the main contents of the theoretical framework and clarified the structure as well as components of environmental coconsciousness analysed in this study.

The three dimensions of environmental consciousness, which include the environmental worldview, environmental attitude, and behaviour intention, are elaborated respectively in detail in Chapters 4~6 of this study. Chapter 4 deals with people’s worldview and value judgments regarding environmental issues; Chapter 5 aims to clarify people’s environmental attitude from people’s cognition and evaluations toward the environment; Chapter 6 aims to clarify the status as well as the formation of environmental intentions and motivations. The influence of demographic factors to the formation of people’s environmental consciousness on three dimensions is analysed in all three chapters.