Environmental Beliefs and Attitudes in Sweden and the Baltic States

Geoffrey D. Gooch

Gooch, Geoffrey D. “Environmental beliefs and attitudes in Sweden and the Baltic states.” Environment and behavior 27.4 (1995): 513-539.

This particular article studies the topic of environmental behavior in Europe and challenges the dominant sociocultural paradigms, or a group’s way of looking at the world, regarding specific environmental beliefs and attitudes in Sweden and the Baltic states of Latvia, and Estonia. This is a relatively old study, conducted in 1995 and published in a Environment and Behavior Sage Publishing journal online, which I uploaded in PDF form. The principal purpose of the study was to determine correlations (if any) that prevail between a number of specified beliefs and values and degree of environmental concern, and what the consistencies are of those beliefs and values. Since the study is measuring beliefs and attitudes, the type of data needed to answer the question are shallow opinions and attitudes or deeply held opinion and attitudes depending on the individual’s perception of environmental issues. The cities in which the research was conducted were urban populations in Tartu, Estonia, Riga, Latvia, and the county of Ostergotland, Sweden. The study uses a data-gathering method of surveys and in-depth interviews and it utilized three scales to measure values and beliefs, a 6-question version of the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale that measures “primitive” environmental beliefs and their differences, a four-item scale to measure support for environmental science and technology, and another four-item scale version of Ronald Inglehart’s “post-materialism scale.” Methods of data analysis used in this research consisted of statistical analyses or interval/ratio data since the survey data were transferred into a quantitative fashion. Results of the surveys conducted revealed that support for the NEP, distrust of science and technology, post-material values, and concern for environmental conditions were only partially supported by the results of the Swedish study, and, not at all in the case of the Baltic samples.

The study seemed to be pretty comprehensive and it accounted for a lot of variability between the cities being analyzed in an attempt to make it as controlled as possible. However, I feel like there could’ve been a few more cities analyzed in case one of the urban areas wasn’t an accurate sample of the survey population. One thing I find quite interesting is that socio-cultural symbolic representations of reported global problems is used as a fourth explanatory factor in determining environmental attitudes for individuals for this study.