Does religion promote pro-environmental behaviour? A cross-country investigation

Kahsay Haile Zemo and Halefom Yigzaw Nigus

Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2021, vol. 10, issue 1, 90-113

Abstract: Religion is one of the most prominent social institutions in the world and is profoundly entangled with day to day activities of the majority of the population. However, the effect of religion on socio-economic and environmental dimensions of development is not yet well explored in literature. Thus, this study aims to investigate the influence of multiple indicators of religion on pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes, and whether its effect varies across different income categories of countries. To this end, we use the World Value Survey data from up to 212,995 respondents across 91 countries collected from 1989 to 2014. The results of the study show that religion induces pro-environmental behaviour. Religion promotes individuals' willingness to contribute money and dampens individuals' protest against contributing for environmental protection. Similarly, religion has a positive effect on ecological donation and participation in the environmental demonstration. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that the effects of some of the religious indicators on stated willingness to contribute for environmental protection are more pronounced in low-income countries than countries in high-income categories. These results highlight the importance of religion on environmental protection and suggest that integrating religion into environmental policies and programs may yield better environmental outcomes.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21606544.2020.1796820 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:teepxx:v:10:y:2021:i:1:p:90-113

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/teep20

DOI: 10.1080/21606544.2020.1796820

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy is currently edited by Ken Willis

More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().