Environmental Attitudes and Emancipative Values: Evidence from the European Values Study

Abstract

The focus of this article is on how social modernization, specifically the process of a gradual spread of emancipatory, or post-materialistic, value orientations, affects environmental attitudes in a comparative perspective. Based on the evolutionary theory of modernization developed by R. Inglehart and C. Welzel, we propose a sociological model of the formation of environmental attitudes that combines both micro- and macro-level perspectives and takes into account both subjective and objective factors. We test hypotheses derived from this model using a multi-level regression approach and data from public opinion surveys conducted as part of the 5th wave of the European Values Study (2017-2020; N = 56,368), as well as socio-economic statistics from 30 European countries. Our results show that both individual commitment to emancipatory values and the overall prevalence of these orientations in society are statistically significantly and positively correlated with the strength of pro-environmental views at the respective levels of analysis — more prominently at the country level, but values are the most important predictor of environmental attitudes at the individual level as well. Furthermore, there is a cross-level interaction: the more prevalent emancipatory orientations are in a specific country, the stronger the link between individual values and attitudes towards environmental issues. Additionally, the support for pro-environmental views slightly decreases with age and increases with the levels of education and income. This indicates that modernization contributes to the spread of a pro-environmental worldview not only through shifting prevalent normative beliefs but also through other mechanisms, particularly by expanding available action resources.