Egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric environmental concerns: a path analytic investigation of their determinants.
Previous studies have shown that environmental concerns (ECs) can be reduced to a three-factor model - comprising altruistic, biospheric, and egoistic concerns - but there have been few studies examining individual difference predictors of ECs. In this study with 203 individuals from a British community sample, we show that biospheric concern was significantly associated with participants' age, political orientation, Machiavellianism, and the Big Five personality traits of Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness. Altruistic concern was significantly associated with sex, age, political orientation, and Machiavellianism, but not the Big Five traits, whereas egoistic concern was not significantly associated with any of these predictors except sex. These results are discussed in relation to previous work on ECs and pro-environmental behavior.
Swami
Viren
V
Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW, UK. virenswami@hotmail.com
Chamorro-Premuzic
Tomas
T
Snelgar
Rosemary
R
Furnham
Adrian
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000533:Altruism; D003242:Conscience; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D004644:Emotions; D052918:Environmental Restoration and Remediation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008257:Machiavellianism; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011057:Politics; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012945:Social Values; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D055815:Young Adult