The impact of religious faith on attitudes to environmental issues and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies: A mixed methods study

Hope, Aimie LB, and Christopher R. Jones. “The impact of religious faith on attitudes to environmental issues and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies: A mixed methods study.” Technology in Society 38 (2014): 48-59.

This socio-environmental study was published in the journal of Technology in Society in 2014, and was conducted by Aimie Hope and Christopher Jones, who investigated the potential differences in environmental values and beliefs of people representing Christian, Muslim and secular communities. They began to explore this topic by asking two questions: (1) what were potential differences between the Muslim, Christian and secular participants in terms of pro-environmental values and beliefs; and (2) how attitudes to carbon capture storage (CCS) and climate change were shaped by religious beliefs. The type of data needed to answer the questions were deeply held opinions and attitudes as well as reports of acts, events and behaviors. Therefore, an exploratory mixed methods approach was utilized, combining in-depth focus group discussions with a short questionnaire, which incorporated topics from the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale that addresses themes surrounding anti-anthropocentrism; the reality of limits to growth; the rejection of exemptionalism; the possibility of eco-crisis; and the fragility of nature’s balance. The focus group discussions were recorded and transcribed and thematically examined, while the surveys were statistically analyzed through an NEP Template Analysis. The results revealed that both Christian and Muslim groups had relatively low perceptions of urgency for environmental issues due to beliefs in an afterlife and divine intervention while secular participants expressed anxiety in relation to environmental issues, especially climate change due to a lack of belief in an afterlife or divine intervention leading them to focus on human need for action.

Overall, this study is very comprehensive and studies many aspects of environmental issues and provides meaningful results, but I think the researchers could have surveyed many more participants and held a few more focus groups. Increasing participants in general would have definitely taken more time, but I personally don’t think 20 people could accurately represent the three different religious views accurately, so getting more people to increase the variation in responses would’ve been more interesting as well as providing a better foundation for results.

One thing I found quite interesting is that a few people from the Muslim and Christian faiths thought CCS was “interfering” with our environment, even though the constant release of fossil fuels into our atmosphere doesn’t matter too much. It just showed me how much religion can skew or enhance one’s views to a great extent.