Environmental concern in South Africa

Abstract

The present study has identified variables which significantly distinguish between environmentally concerned and unconcerned subpopulations of different ethnic groupings in South Africa, and assimilated these variables within a new model of environmental concern. This model developed from a framework relating to attitude formation, adaptation and expression and focuses on the prediction of environmental concern as an important precursor of environmentally responsible behaviour. The model proposes that the prediction of environmental concern involves a number of variables associated with structures at different levels of experience. Subjects for the study were selected by students registered for the third-year course in Environmental Psychology at the University of South Africa in 1991 and 1992. Each student's sample consisted of four boys and four girls of 14 to 16 years of age, and four men and four women over 20 years of age from the following ethnic groups: Whites, blacks, Asians and coloured. The sample for 1991 consisted of 4475 subjects with 1954 subjects in the 1992 sample. Subjects completed the Environmental Concern Scale (ECS) developed by Weigel and Weigel (1978) and named what they consider to be the three most serious threats to the environment in order of priority. Empirical data strongly support the model's conceptualisation of the emergence of environmental concern as a dynamic composition of individual experience, factors at the personal level and factors at the socio-level, and temporal and spatial structures. With regards to the personal level factors, results from the factor analyses confirmed the existence of a passively orientated mode of environmental concern that sees others as being responsible for solving environmental problems, and a mode of personal responsibility or active concern. Results from the CHAID analyses showed conclusively that ethnic grouping, as a socio-level variable, is the single-most significant and consistent predictor of environmental concern, be it passive or active concern. As anticipated, the CHAID analyses also demonstrated that correlates of environmental concern differed across the two modes of thinking: For all ethnic groupings, respondents with higher educational qualifications consistently showed higher levels of passive concern than respondents with lower qualifications across the 1991 and 1992 data sets. Depending on ethnic grouping, place of residence, exposure to environmental education programmes and home language also played a role as interacting predictors of passive environmental concern. On the other hand, however, age group, gender and leisure-time interacted with ethnic grouping as relevant variables in the prediction of active concern. Apart from confirming the multidirectional features of the model, the data also testify to the dynamic interaction between personal and socio-level variables over time. With regard to individual subjective experience, the findings on subjects' perceptions about serious threats to the environment show that, although general pollution and air pollution remained the two most popular choices across all ethnic groupings, other distinct group differences in perception emerged. More specifically, whites, Asians and coloured respondents considered global and local problems to be serious threats, while blacks were more aware of problems which affect their daily lives. The findings serve to underscore the necessity of establishing exactly what a specific target group regard as the "environment" before any attempt is made to determine their attitudes towards environmental problems. Contrary to expectations, however, there were no significant differences between concerned and unconcerned subgroups as regards perception of serious threats, and the data of the content analysis revealed that peoples' perceptions of the most serious threats to the environment did not coincide with newspaper coverage of environmental issues in the two periods prior to the data gathering in 1991 and 1992. It should also be pointed out that the model was not as effective in accounting for the data from black samples as it was for other ethnic groupings. One of the possible reasons offered is that the key to understanding groups differences in environmental attitudes lies in the territorial range of the environmental concern being examined and the way in which environmental belief systems emerge. Directions for future research on environmental attitudes are suggested. The delineation of unconcerned groups has pinpointed those groups at whom efforts to bring about changes in orientation could be directed through awareness programmes. Concerned groups, on the other hand, could be encouraged to learn new skills and become more actively involved in identifying and resolving environmental problems and issues at all levels. The suggested way to implement this would be through environmental education.