The Natural World and Environmental Public Opinion in America
Open Access
- Author:
- Buxton, Caden
- Area of Honors:
- Political Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Amy T Linch, Thesis Supervisor
Gretchen G Casper, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Environment
Climate Change
Public Opinion
Democracy
General Social Survey - Abstract:
- Climate change and environmental degradation are major areas of policy concern, with a substantial section of public opinion literature dedicated to environmental issues. In democratic contexts, where public preferences should translate into policy, the formation of public attitudes on the environment is particularly relevant. This paper utilizes survey data from the 2018 and 2021 versions of the GSS to examine whether access to nature and deriving benefits from these natural spaces alters policy preferences on environmental spending. This link is situated in the Values-Beliefs-Norms approach to environmental public opinion, which expects policy preferences and behaviors to derive from underlying pro-environment values. Multinomial regression finds that respondent experience of nature has little to no relationship on stated preferences for spending to protect the environment in both the 2018 and 2021 datasets. Other factors, like trust in science, age, and gender, were found in both years to predict respondent policy preferences. The predictive significance of these factors matches the literature on environmental public opinion. This paper concludes that there is insufficient evidence that the psychological or social benefits of nature meaningfully shape policy preferences, although the topic of environmental public opinion in America deserves further study.