Values, Beliefs, and Proenvironmental Action: Attitude Formation Toward Emergent Attitude Objects¹

Abstract

Discoveries in environmental science become the raw material for constructing social attitude objects, individual attitudes, and broad public concerns. We explored a model in which individuals construct attitudes to new or emergent attitude objects by referencing personal values and beliefs about the consequences of the objects for their values. We found that a subset of the major clusters identified in value theory is associated with willingness to take proenvironmental action; that a biospheric value orientation cannot yet be discerned in a general population sample; that willingness to take proenvironmental action is a function of both values and beliefs, with values also predicting beliefs; and that gender differences can be attributed to both beliefs and values. Our model has promise for explicating the factors determining public concern with environmental conditions.