INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY

New publication!

Urban, J. & Kaiser, F. G. (2022). Environmental attitudes in 28 European countries de­rived from atheoretically compiled opinions and self-reports of behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 875419.

Available free of charge at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875419

Abstract:

People differ in their personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment. The question is, can we validly measure people’s commitment by what they say and what they claim they do in opinion polls? In our research, we demonstrate that opinions and reports of past behavior can be aggregated into comparable depictions of people’s personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment (i.e., their environmental attitudes). In contrast to the commonly used operational scaling approaches, we ground our measure of people’s environmental attitudes in a mathematically formalized psychological theory of the response process—the Campbell paradigm. This theory of the response process has already been extensively validated, and its relevance for manifest behavior has repeatedly been shown as well. In our secondary analysis of Eurobarometer data (N = 27,998) from 28 European countries, we apply the Campbell paradigm to a set of indicators that was not originally collected to be aggregated into a single scale. With our research, we propose a distinct way to measure behavior-relevant environmental attitudes that can be used even with a set of indicators that was originally atheoretically compiled. Overall, our study suggests that the Campbell paradigm provides a sound psychological measurement theory that can be applied to cross-cultural comparisons in the environmental protection domain.

In his invited keynote ad­dress at the Leuven Institute of Advanced Study in Leuven, Belgium, Prof. Florian Kaiser talks about what environmentally protective behavior is and how we can support it. Watch the talk here.

New publication!

Bauske, E., Kibbe, A. & Kaiser, F. G. (2022). Opinion polls as measures of commitment to goals: Environmental attitude in Germany from 1996 to 2018. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 81, 101805.

Available free of charge until June, 16th 2022: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1e%7EG8zzKDEWDq

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101805

Abstract:

Can opinion polls be used to measure people's personal commitment to protecting the environment over the years, even with data that were not originally compiled from a longitudinal perspective? In a secondary analysis of 12 data sets collected over the course of 22 years and containing more than 28,000 person records, we demonstrate that opinions and reports of behavior can be aggregated into valid depictions of people's personal commitment to protecting the environment (i.e., their environmental attitudes). In contrast to traditional scaling approaches that define such measures by the item sets used for measurement, we grounded our measure in a psychological measurement theory of the response process—the Campbell paradigm. We found that the average level of environmental attitude in Germany has increased slightly since 1996. With a new sample of 1,689 respondents, we validated our estimates of people's environmental attitudes with estimates of the same people's annual CO₂ emissions.

Highlights:

• People's environmental attitudes reveal commitment to environmental protection.

• Commitment to protecting the environment can be measured with opinion polls.

• Fragmented data from distinct samples can form a comparable commitment measure.

• People committed to environmental protection leave smaller carbon footprints behind.

• Since 1996, environmental attitude has been on a slow but steady rise in Germany.

New publication!

Baierl, T-M., Kaiser, F. G., & Bogner, F. X. (2022). The supportive role of environmental attitude for learning about environmental issues. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 81, 101799.

Free access to the article (until May 22, 2022): https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1erTKzzKDEWCz

Also available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101799

Abstract

People’s commitment to environmental preservation (i.e., environmental attitude) appears to be critical for manifest engagement. Correspondingly, it seems advisable that environmental scientists, educators, and policy-makers also pay heed to environmental attitude’s role in learning, another form of manifest behavior. In our research, we tested the hypothesis that people with stronger environmental attitudes learn comparatively more about environmental issues than people with weaker such attitudes. In a sample of 1,896 students (M = 14.2, SD = 1.8), we identified people’s environmental attitudes in their verbal expressions of support for preserving the environment and their self-reports of past behavior aimed at preserving the environment. We corroborated our hypothesis and found that people’s preexisting environmental attitudes supported their acquisition of new knowledge. We also corroborated the characteristic developmental trajectory of adolescents’ environmental attitudes with an early maximum at around age 11 or 12, a minimum at around age 16, and a subsequent recovery.

Keywords: knowledge level; environmental education; environmental attitudes; attitude measurement; Campbell paradigm

Highlights

• Environmental attitude reveals people's commitment to environmental preservation.

• Commitment to environmental preservation is measurable within the Campbell paradigm.

• People's environmental attitudes develop characteristically throughout adolescence.

• The early maximum at 11/12 drops to a minimum at 16 followed by some recovery.

• People's environmental attitudes are critical for acquiring new and more knowledge. 

In the newest episode of Katie Patrick's podcast "How to Save the World" titled "The Real Psychology of Why We Make Environmental Changes" Prof. Florian Kaiser talks about sustainable behavior, environmental attitude, and behavioral costs. Here you can find more information about the episode.