Measuring Beliefs Supportive of Environmental Action and Inaction: A Reinterpretation of the Awareness of Consequences Scale

Anthony Ryan and Clive Spash

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The Value-Belief-Norm model assumes that egoistic, social-altruistic and biospheric value orientations causally influence how people cognitively structure beliefs regarding adverse environmental consequences. Empirical studies have administered the Awareness of Consequences (AC) scale to differentiate between these three orientations. We report an analysis which challenges previous work in the field. Evidence is presented that indicates the AC scale should be reinterpreted as a measure of beliefs supporting environmental action and beliefs supporting environmental inaction. The beliefs supporting environmental action appear to be differentiable according to beliefs in the positive consequences from environmental protection and the seriousness of environment harm. This has major implications for the Value-Belief-Norm model and its application.

Keywords: Environmental attitudes; awareness of consequences scale; environmental beliefs; value orientations; environmental scales; egoistic; altruistic; biospheric; value-belief-norm model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D46 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:23900

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