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Excess agricultural nitrogen (N) in the environment is a persistent problem in the United States and other regions of the world, contributing to water and air pollution, as well as to climate change. Efforts to reduce N from agricultural sources largely rely on voluntary efforts by farmers to reduce inputs and improve uptake by crops. However, research has failed to comprehensively depict farmers9 N decision-making processes, particularly when engaging with uncertainty. Through analysis of in-depth interviews with US corn (Zea mays L.) growers, this study reveals how farmers experience and process numerous uncertainties associated with N management, such as weather variability, crop and input price volatility, lack of knowledge about biophysical systems, and the possibility of underapplying or overapplying. Farmers used one of two general decision-making management strategies to address these uncertainties: heuristic-based or data-intensive decision-making. Heuristic-based decision-making involves minimizing sources of uncertainty and reliance on heuristics and personal previous experiences, while data-intensive decision-making is the increased use of field- and farm-scale data collection and management, as well as increased management effort within a given growing season.

Understanding what drives farmers’ voluntary adoption of nutrient and soil best management practices has important consequences for many environmental outcomes including water quality. We build on ...

Owners and managers of private lands make decisions that have implications well beyond the boundaries of their land, influencing species conservation, water quality, wildfire risk, and other environmental outcomes with important societal and ecological consequences. Understanding how these decisions are made is key for informing interventions to support better outcomes. However, explanations of the drivers of decision making are often siloed in social science disciplines that differ in focus, theory, methodology, and terminology, hindering holistic understanding. To address these challenges, we propose a conceptual model of private land conservation decision-making that integrates theoretical perspectives from three dominant disciplines: economics, sociology, and psychology. The model highlights how heterogeneity in behavior across decision-makers is driven by interactions between the decision context, attributes of potential conservation behaviors, and attributes of the decision-maker. These differences in both individual attributes and context shape decision-makers’ constraints and the potential and perceived consequences of a behavior. The model also captures how perceived consequences are evaluated and weighted through a decision-making process that may range from systematic to heuristic, ultimately resulting in selection of a behavior. Outcomes of private land behaviors across the landscape feed back to alter the socio-environmental conditions that shape future decisions. The conceptual model is designed to facilitate better communication, collaboration, and integration across disciplines and points to methodological innovations that can expand understanding of private land decision-making. The model also can be used to illuminate how behavior change interventions (e.g., policies, regulations, technical assistance) could be designed to target different drivers to encourage environmentally and socially beneficial behaviors on private lands.

More than three decades of social science research demonstrates environmental issues as important social problems commanding international attention. Although an emerging body of scholarship examin...

In an age of increasingly available options, which sources of information about nutrient management do farmers use to guide their management decisions and why? Recent work reveals emerging shifts in how farmers access information about technology and practices related to their operation. In this study, we use survey data gathered in 2014 in the US Corn Belt to examine the information sources that farmers use, the likely influence those sources will have on their nitrogen (N) fertilizer decisions, and whether some information sources are held in higher regard than others. We explore the factors shaping whether farmers use multiple information sources as well as their consultation of particular ones. Our empirical analysis reveals that most farmers in our sample use multiple information sources and that the number of sources used varies by having attended college and farm size. Just over three sources are used on average among the full sample, with those reporting having some college using more than three and large operators using four sources. Farmers9 perception of these sources differs in the degree to which they perceive the importance of recommendations to influence management practice decisions. Among our sample, fertilizer dealers, crop consultants, seed suppliers, and university extension are greatly valued and influential sources. Finally, education and years in farming shape the selection of multiple information sources or the intensity of information gathering, and along with these factors, attitudes and values influence the importance farmers place on various sources for N recommendations.

In recent decades, research reveals that environmental activism has declined globally and identifies distinctive regional patterns and possible national trends. Improving our understanding of what shapes environmental activism is important for comparative social science scholarship. This study addresses this challenge through investigation of a model of environmental activism that includes environmental trust along with a core set of predictors from previous scholarly work. Comparisons are conducted both across regions and countries using structural equation modeling with latent variables and a unique set of items only available in the 2000 International Social Survey Program data. Although important similarities are revealed across regions, results also show unanticipated effects. In addition, findings for 22 countries individually reveal intriguing patterning. Analyses both by region and by country advance our collective understanding of the predictors shaping environmental activism and provide fruitful avenues for future study.

Purpose This research contributes to the literature on workplace energy conservation by examining the predictors of individual employee behaviors and policy support in a university. The purpose of this research is to better understand what factors influence energy conservation behaviors in this setting to inform programs and interventions. Design/methodology/approach This project gathered survey data from employee-occupants of three campus buildings. Ordinary least squares regression analyses were used to investigate the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and attitudes-behavior-constraints (ABC) models examining what drives energy behaviors. Findings This study finds a large proportion of respondents would support energy use reduction policies, more technology-based interventions and increased use of renewable sources. Respondents report positive attitudes toward individual energy conservation behavior but mild agreement with the influence of social norms. Self-efficacy reports also are positive. Although the TPB model is not fully supported in this group, the ABC model appears to perform well. Originality/value In addition to adding to the relatively limited data on employee energy-saving behaviors in the university workplace, this study provides initial evidence that the ABC model is pertinent to this behavioral context. It also provides specific, usable data about policies and actions that campus community members might deem feasible and acceptable to relevant university offices.

Nitrogen fertilizer has increased crop yields, but in many regions inefficient use has also resulted in water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Attempts to address these environmental issues focus on education and the adoption of more efficient practices. To understand why inefficient use of nitrogen fertilizer persists, scholars have examined factors influencing management decisions including sources of information. Drawing from personal interviews and a mail survey of corn farmers in the Midwest region of the United States, this study goes beyond research that identifies what sources of information are important and examines how different sources are weighed and combined, why some sources are more influential than others, and what organizations and individuals farmers trust given the many private and public sources of information available. We find that most farmers combine several different sources of information to guide their nitrogen fertilizer decisions, private sector sources are highly influential, and that seed and fertilizer suppliers have successfully established trust with farmers through individual relationships with salespeople and crop consultants. These findings suggest that education programs to address environmental degradation associated with nitrogen fertilizer may be more successful if they involve input suppliers.

Although sustainability-related efforts remain central to development, their accomplishment varies across places for a variety of reasons including climatic and geographic differences. This variability makes a regional focus important. In this paper, we investigate ecological footprints in both total and sub-footprint forms as measures of environmental sustainability over time in Africa. We examine economic, demographic, and ecological variables as key factors driving national-level environmental sustainability in Africa over nearly five decades. Our results reveal demographic attributes to be the primary but not the only forces affecting environmental sustainability. We situate our findings both in the context of prior studies and in relation to opportunities for further academic study.

Recent estimates indicate that 12% of the global population is likely to have suffered from chronic hunger, due to lack of enough food for an active and healthy life. West Africa, specifically across the Sahel countries, is acutely vulnerable to food insecurity concerns. Mail is emblematic of this problem with approximately 4.6 million citizens considered food insecure. Food security poses formidable challenges. Studies have shown that in order to understand food insecurity and identify steps for effective intervention, there is a need to apprehend the food systems and food in/security in a holistic way beyond production alone. Understanding the behavioral aspects of food security is critical in the African context where agriculture, while oriented toward basic subsistence, remains embedded in social system including the social dynamics of households, extended families, and communities. This exploratory work focuses on developing a nuanced understanding of food security and adaptive behaviors to current challenges to food security at the household level with a distinct focus on inter- and intra-family behavioral dynamics in rural, southern Mali. Using mental models methodology, we developed two influence diagrams and a set of sub-models that represent rural households’ mental models of food security under traditional conditions and under conditions of external pressures. These models suggest that food security in rural Mali is at considerable risk due to the influence of external challenges, such as climate change, on traditional behaviors and a lack of easily accessible corresponding behavioral adaptations.

Participatory modeling has been widely recognized in recent years as a powerful tool for dealing with risk and uncertainty. By incorporating multiple perspectives into the structure of a model, we hypothesize that sources of risk can be identified and analyzed more comprehensively compared to traditional ‘expert-driven’ models. However, one of the weaknesses of a participatory modeling process is that it is typically not feasible to involve more than a few dozen people in model creation, and valuable perspectives on sources of risk may therefore be absent. We sought to address this weakness by conducting parallel participatory modeling processes in three countries in West Africa with similar climates and smallholder agricultural systems, but widely differing political and cultural contexts. Stakeholders involved in the agricultural sector in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria participated in either a scenario planning process or a causal loop diagramming process, in which they were asked about drivers of agricultural productivity and food security, and sources of risk, including climate risk, between the present and mid-century (2035–2050). Participants in all three workshops identified both direct and indirect sources of climate risk, as they interact with other critical drivers of agricultural systems change, such as water availability, political investment in agriculture, and land availability. We conclude that participatory systems methods are a valuable addition to the suite of methodologies for analyzing climate risk and that scientists and policy-makers would do well to consider dynamic interactions between drivers of risk when assessing the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change.

Despite consistent gains in global agricultural productivity in the last 50 years, lack of food security persists in many regions of the world. Addressing this issue is especially pertinent in Africa where 39 of the nearly five dozen nations most at risk of food insecurity are located. We draw from interdisciplinary research to develop an empirical model that outlines the four interconnected aspects of food security—availability, access, utilization and stability. Given the complexity of this issue, we develop a model that considers agricultural, socio-political, and economic factors as drivers of food security and its manifestations, related in a complex system of relations that includes both direct and indirect paths. We use structural equation modeling with latent variables to specify a model that seeks to determine the primary drivers of food security over 55 years in Africa, West Africa as a region, and for a group of 5 West African countries: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria. Empirical results reveal the critical importance of availability and accessibility for mitigating food insecurity.

The US Dust Bowl of the 1930s (a prolong period of drought experienced in the United States accompanied by severe sand storms) is often described as an abnormal event. However, climate change is likely to increase the frequency and impact of similar occurrences. Because of this, a growing number of scholars have begun to examine multiple facets of climate-induced migration from various disciplinary traditions. Specifically, scholars have called for continued research into individual decision-making processes. Responding to this call, we construct a mental model from historical interviews of those who migrated to California during the US Dust Bowl. Our model provides insight into the migration process with a unique focus on individual decision-making processes of migrants.

A gricultural systems face the challenge of increasing production to meet growing global demand for food while protecting the natural resource base in a changing climate. Major environmental challenges include rebuilding soil health after centuries of heavily extractive production systems, improving water and air quality, and contributing to climate change mitigation (Robertson 2015). These resource problems are diffuse and pervasive, resulting from the decisions of individual farmers who are struggling to balance production with environmental protection. Moreover, public policies in the United States promote large-scale monoculture production and heavy reliance on industrial inputs through direct subsidies and insurance options that limit farmer choices (Iles and Marsh 2012; Stuart and Gillon 2013). Meeting these challenges requires a multipronged and multilayered approach: actions by thousands of individual farmers supported by research into new approaches, education about emerging practices and technologies, and policies that promote sustainability. These types of challenges have been described as wicked problems (Batie 2008) because they are dynamic, complex, and occur in both technical and social dimensions as compared to problems with straightforward causes and effects that are largely solvable through technical solutions. In the agri-environmental context, wicked problems arise because farming is both an ecological and a socioeconomic process.

Over the last three decades, climate change has become publicly defined as an important social problem deserving action. A substantial body of social science research examines the patterns of climate change views in the general publics of countries around the world. In this review essay, we identify the strongest and most consistent predictors of key dimensions of climate change views within many countries, and we also discuss the prevailing theoretical explanations of these specific effects. Since the US has yet to adopt comprehensive climate change mitigation policy and has historically played an obstructionist role in international climate negotiations, we further explain the political dynamics of US climate change views that help characterize the US’s outlier status among industrial capitalist democracies. We then present an integrative theoretical framework—based upon an extension of the anti-reflexivity thesis—that explains why the strength and consistency of predictors relate to how closely those predictors distinguish ideological and material positions defending the industrial capitalist system from those positions accepting that it should be reformed or restructured. We end with a brief discussion of promising avenues through which future research may address key gaps in our understanding of climate change views.

Summary This study evaluated the effects of spatial resolution on environmental justice analysis concerning stream health. The Saginaw River Basin in Michigan was selected since it is an area of concern in the Great Lakes basin. Three Bayesian Conditional Autoregressive (CAR) models (ordinary regression, weighted regression and spatial) were developed for each stream health measure based on 17 socioeconomic and physiographical variables at three census levels. For all stream health measures, spatial models had better performance compared to the two non-spatial ones at the census tract and block group levels. Meanwhile no spatial dependency was found at the county level. Multilevel Bayesian CAR models were also developed to understand the spatial dependency at the three levels. Results showed that considering level interactions improved models’ prediction. Residual plots also showed that models developed at the block group and census tract (in contrary to county level models) are able to capture spatial variations.

Environmental issues such as pollution and access to clean water and concerns like awareness of environmental conditions are pressing global challenges. Despite its importance, however, our understanding of how environmental views connect with trust is understudied. To address this gap in the literature, this article examines the composition, level, and distribution of environmental trust as a latent variable and the factors shaping it. Both cross-region and cross-country comparisons are conducted using structural equation modeling and a unique set of items only available in the 2000 International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data. Important similarities are shown across regions, yet findings for 26 countries individually reveal intriguing differences. Analyses by region and by country advance our collective understanding regarding the presence of universal dynamics shaping environmental trust.

Environmental issues and opinions are increasingly recognized as topics of importance to a global audience. Scholars in the social sciences seek to describe trends in public opinion about environmental concerns cross-nationally, yet use a variety of measures and analytical techniques for such work. Although an understudied topic, the question of measurement comparability across contexts is important for this line of inquiry. This research examines public opinion on the environment in a cross-national context using the 2010 International Social Survey Program (ISSP) Environment data. I use structural equation modeling with latent variables to construct a latent measure of environmental risk perception across 32 countries. I examine the composition, level, and distribution of the latent construct environmental risk perception cross-nationally, with comparisons across regional groups. Particular attention is given to how structural equation modeling can be used as a tool for testing measurement equivalence i...

There is a strong political divide on climate change in the US general public, with Liberals and Democrats expressing greater belief in and concern about climate change than Conservatives and Republicans. Recent studies find a similar though less pronounced divide in other countries. Its leadership in international climate policy making warrants extending this line of research to the European Union (EU). The extent of a left–right ideological divide on climate change views is examined via Eurobarometer survey data on the publics of 25 EU countries before the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2009 ‘climategate’ controversy and COP-15 in Copenhagen, and an increase in organized climate change denial campaigns. Citizens on the left consistently reported stronger belief in climate change and support for action to mitigate it than did citizens on the right in 14 Western European countries. There was no such ideological divide in 11 former Communist countries, likely due to the low political salience of...

In this study, spatial clustering techniques were used in combination with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to characterize the relationships between in-stream health indicators and socioeconomic measures of communities. The study area is the Saginaw River Watershed in Michigan. Four measures of stream health were considered: the Index of Biological Integrity, Hilsenhoff Biotic Index, Family Index of Biological Integrity, and number of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera taxa. The stream health indicators were predicted using nine socioeconomic variables that capture vulnerability in population. The results of spatial clustering showed that incorporating clustering configuration improves the model prediction. A total of 510 Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFAs) and 85 multivariate regression models were developed for each spatial cluster within the watershed and compared with the model performance without spatial clustering (at the watershed level). In general, watershed level CFAs outperformed cluster level CFAs, while the reverse was true for the regression models. Relationships between stream health and socioeconomic measures were studied.Spatial clustering techniques and Structural Equation Modeling were integrated.Spatial clustering improved regression model prediction.Confirmatory Factor Analysis performed well at the watershed level.

The two key factors of (1) how local interests should be weighed in public land management and (2) the manner in which public land designation occurred have been overlooked in research on trust in federal land management agencies. The literature also tends to focus solely on direct relationships between various predictors of trust, rather than examining indirect relationships. Using survey data of Escalante, Utah, residents 10 years after designation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM), and via mediation analysis, we find perceived power of local groups and perceptions of the manner of designation work through perceptions of the current GSENM decision-making process to affect trust in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The findings suggest that as participatory processes become more inclusive over time, it is possible that the scars from the manner of designation may be less prominent.

There is great benefit in using measures of environmentally significant behaviour – rather than just behavioural intentions or self-reported behaviour – if we are to advance our understanding of the individual and structural factors that influence environmental decision-making. Along these lines, to supplement the use of behavioural intention and self-reported behaviour measures in environmental decision-making research, we identify and validate a simple measure of one form of environmentally significant behaviour: financial support for environmental movement organizations. Using the values-beliefs-norms theoretical framework, we conducted an experiment to examine the performance of this measure of actual behaviour. This behavioural measure meets multiple dimensions of validity – including face, concurrent criterion-related, and construct – as a measure of environmentally significant behaviour in environmental decision-making research. As would be expected, we find that actual donations are smaller than h...

This article argues for the systematic, coordinated, and ongoing collection of primary data on humans, spanning beliefs, perceptions, behaviors, and institutions, alongside data about the water environments in which people are embedded. Such an enterprise would not only advance water science and related policy and management decisions, but also generate basic insights into human cognition, decision making, and institutional development. Input from a convenience sample of water scientists and managers suggests that natural scientists and engineers have less experience with social data than social scientists with natural system data, both groups have strong interest in human dimensions of water science, and there are disciplinary differences in data priorities.

Whether or not actual shifts in climate influence public perceptions of climate change remains an open question, one with important implications for societal response to climate change. We use the most comprehensive public opinion survey data on climate change available for the US to examine effects of annual and seasonal climate variation. Our results show that political orientation has the most important effect in shaping public perceptions about the timing and seriousness of climate change. Objective climatic conditions do not influence Americans’ perceptions of the timing of climate change and only have a negligible effect on perceptions about the seriousness of climate change. These results suggest that further changes in climatic conditions are unlikely to produce noticeable shifts in Americans’ climate change perceptions.

Summary The dynamics and relationships between society and nature are complex and difficult to predict. Anthropogenic activities affect the ecological integrity of our natural resources, specifically our streams. Further, it is well-established that the costs of these activities are born unequally by different human communities. This study considered the utility of integrating stream health metrics, based on stream health indicators, with socio-economic measures of communities, to better characterize these effects. This study used a spatial multi-factor model and bivariate mapping to produce a novel assessment for watershed management, identification of vulnerable areas, and allocation of resources. The study area is the Saginaw River watershed located in Michigan. In-stream hydrological and water quality data were used to predict fish and macroinvertebrate measures of stream health. These measures include the Index of Biological Integrity (IBI), Hilsenhoff Biotic Index (HBI), Family IBI, and total number of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT) taxa. Stream health indicators were then compared to spatially coincident socio-economic data, obtained from the United States Census Bureau (2010), including race, income, education, housing, and population size. Statistical analysis including spatial regression and cluster analysis were used to examine the correlation between vulnerable human populations and environmental conditions. Overall, limited correlation was observed between the socio-economic data and ecological measures of stream health, with the highest being a negative correlation of 0.18 between HBI and the social parameter household size. Clustering was observed in the datasets with urban areas representing a second order clustering effect over the watershed. Regions with the worst stream health and most vulnerable social populations were most commonly located nearby or down-stream to highly populated areas and agricultural lands.

Research reveals environmental concerns to be important in public opinion surveys and polls worldwide. Simultaneously, research reveals questions that remain and areas ripe for inquiry, yielding insights to inform and pose challenges for future investigations. For instance, although environmental concerns are prominent, they differ across national and cultural contexts and are composed of many multidimensional facets. In this introduction, I provide a brief overview of research on environmental concern that highlights national, international, and comparative research, major themes and theories investigated, and measures of environmental concern examined in these works. I place special emphasis on comparative and cross-national work published in the past decade as background for discussion of secondary data sets available for analyzing environmental issues and concerns comparatively. I then briefly outline how the articles in this issue fit within this broader context and provide important groundwork for f...

While the traditional assumption is residents have more confidence in governments that are closest to them, empirical studies supporting this claim remain limited. In this study, we test the claim that ‘small is beautiful’ by comparing citizen reactions to similar types of decisions affecting Utah residents made by political leaders at different levels of governance. Our primary goal is to test the claim that trust is higher for local governments. Our secondary goal is to examine potential determinants of trust and whether they vary across levels of governance. The central finding from this study is that, despite claims to the contrary, citizens are not necessarily more trusting of government closer to the people and higher levels of government can engender as much trust as more local levels of government. Our findings also emphasize that regardless of the level of governance considered, interrelations exist between residents’ views of procedural justice and trust in these officials.

In September of 1996, without prior warning to Utah residents, the Clinton Administration announced the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in southern Utah. Reactions by residents in neighboring gateway communities were both swift and intense. Lack of citizen input in the process drew ire among Utah citizens living near the monument and statewide. In this article we examine how the designation process has impacted residents’ trust in the federal agency managing the monument—the Bureau of Land Management. Research on trust in federal resource management agencies is important for successful natural resource planning and management. We extend the research by incorporating the manner in which the designation of the GSENM occurred as an additional factor in the analyses on trust. We find the manner of designation matters, and discuss implications of this finding for both research and policy makers.

This article tests a model of pathways to environmental activism across 16 nations using structural equation modeling. Given previous research, a model is proposed articulating individual resources, knowledge, awareness of consequences, attitudes, willingness to contribute, and efficacy as factors influencing environmental activism. The mediating effect of willingness to make environmental contributions is investigated in detail based on expectations from prior studies. Results from analysis of International Social Survey Program data are broadly supportive of the model across 16 countries individually, as education, awareness of consequences, and attitudes combined affect environmental activism. Moreover, mediating tests demonstrate a prominent but not exclusive role of willingness to contribute in promoting activism across nations, uncovering relationships that are masked in previous cross-national research.

Research examining the globalisation of environmental concern shown in public opinion surveys is currently underspecifi ed, as the coun- tries in Central and Eastern Europe are not explicitly showcased in empiri- cal research. To address this gap in the literature, this research examines two measures of environmental concern, awareness of environmental threats and willingness to sacrifi ce, emphasising former state socialist countries both in comparison with countries around the globe and across countries located within this regional block. Results reveal that Central and Eastern European countries exhibit unique qualities regarding the content of environmental concern, and that, although the determinants of environmental threat aware- ness differ to some extent within this region, the social bases of willingness to sacrifi ce are strikingly similar across the six former state socialist countries in this sample. These results extend prior research and offer important direc- tions for future scholarship.

Land tenure relations have both social and environmental implications, ranging from potential power issues to land stewardship. Drawing upon survey data of landowners collected in the Great Lakes Basin of the U.S., this study builds upon existing research by examining absentee landlords of agricultural land—a vastly understudied but growing category of landowners. By furthering analysis on gender dynamics in the landlord-tenant relationship, the study findings augment Gilbert and Beckley’s (Rural Sociology, 1993) suggestion that subordinate landlord-dominant tenant relationships may be a pattern and contribute to understanding the nuances that co-ownership potentially plays in these relationships.

This article investigates the driving forces of the ecological footprint (EF) and its six subcomponents to examine similarities in sources using a cross-national data set of more than 100 countries. Expectations from environmental impact, world-systems, and world-polity perspectives are incorporated in a model examining the institutional-level attributes driving national-level imprints on the biophysical environment. Results suggest that the structural factors driving ecological footprints differ across the EF's subcomponents and are similar for only one of its pieces, carbon uptake. Specifying alternative sets of predictors from previous research for three EF subcomponents offers support for a model specifying a set of simultaneous equations or seemingly unrelated regression models. These underlying processes, though driven by different structural influences, are linked with one another for the cross-national sample of countries examined here.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error. The acknowledgement section is inadvertently omitted. The missing acknowledgement is given below.

This research examines what motivates residents to become involved in a community-based issue, focusing on how living in close proximity, trust in local officials, and perceptions of decision-making processes influence involvement in a Utah community. Delving into a particular issue provides an opportunity to explore relationships shaping how local politics play out. This study finds that living in close proximity and trust matter in motivating involvement in local politics, while process-based arguments tied to the issue regarding resident expectations do not influence involvement in this case. The results thus suggest that neither lack of trust nor dissatisfaction appears to have a detrimental influence on local democratic processes. Indeed, it appears that in this community a healthy dose of skepticism can promote active engagement with local politics.

Objectives. Despite the emergence of environmental concern worldwide, the social forces underlying its expression are not well understood. This research extends previous cross-national studies by employing multi-item indicators of environmental concern in order to more accurately portray concern for the environment as a multifaceted concept and to determine whether the sources of environmental concern are similar among industrialized countries. Methods. Survey data from the ISSP 2000 Environment data set are analyzed for 19 countries. Results. The findings are threefold. First, there are some remarkably consistent influences on both measures of concern for the environment. Second, some differences remain, which are linked with measuring environmental concern. Third, these results suggest that models explaining environmental concerns appear to operate similarly in this sample of industrialized countries. Conclusions. This investigation provides a baseline for future research to introduce additional cases and correlates to empirically test explanations regarding environmental concern's global reach.

A number of dimensions of the democratic political process are important for understanding civic communities and civic engagement. While many of these aspects have been examined at the federal level, less is known about how these dynamics operate at the local level, especially in rural communities, and that, moreover, involve a specific issue. In this study, we explore the relationships between trust in public officials, views of the decision-making process, and issue-related involvement in a rural community in Utah. In particular, we examine the factors underpinning citizens' expressed levels of general trust in public officials, support for the decision-making process in their community related to a specific issue, the factors influencing individuals to participate in the issue, and how citizens view various groups involved in defining the public good related to the specific issue. We find 1) that perceptions of the political process influence all three aspects of the democratic process, 2) that neither lack of trust nor dissatisfaction appears to be detrimental to the democratic process at the local level, and 3) that differences in opinion regarding definitions of the public good intersect with other aspects of the political process. This research sheds light on factors influencing rural community functioning and citizen responses to proposed changes. In discussing the results, we reflect in particular on their implications for rural communities.

How is the transition from state socialism to market capitalism reshaping political attitudes toward the state in Central and Eastern Europe? Several scholars of the transition have observed a conservative cultural turn in mass politics, suggesting a possible decline of class and gender as meaningful organizing principles for political activity. However, recent empirical analyses of the formation of political attitudes and political activity during the transition suggest that class and gender remain significant predictors of attitudes regarding the responsibility of politicians and welfare state institutions. Our analyses, based on data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), involve political attitudes toward the state in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia. We find that class matters in various ways in different countries. However, results also demonstrate a clear cross-national pattern: those made most economically vulnerable by the transition to market capi...

Concern for the environment has been noted in recent decades as a global phenomenon that is present among general publics in regions around the world. Though a topic of emerging interest, at present, assessments of environmental concern cross-nationally do not provide definitive evidence as to whether similar levels of environmental concern are identifiable across mass publics and whether its underpinnings are similar across national contexts. This research compares concern for the environment across 15 countries, examining the role of measurement cross-nationally. I demonstrate that different rankings of general publics can be distinguished with regard to different measures of environmental concern. I also examine demographic factors typically associated with the expression of environmental concern to determine their cross-national comparability. Results demonstrate that the measurement of environmental concern matters, both in terms of describing its composition in different countries and in identifying...

Political tolerance is a key democratic value believed to undergird successful and healthy democracies. In nascent democracies especially, citizens must tolerate the views and participation of opposing groups in order to ensure methodical transfers of power with successive elections. Yet, despite its importance, little research considers tolerance outside established democracies. In this paper, we compare political tolerance across eight Eastern European countries and six Western countries. We demonstrate that mean levels of tolerance are lower in the newly democratized countries of Eastern Europe and then examine whether they are a function of East Europeans’ limited experience with democracy. We also test whether established individual-level theories of tolerance replicate across this wide range of new and old democracies. We find some support for theories of democratic learning and also show that models of tolerance operate differently across the range of countries in our sample.

Recent international conferences and policy initiatives demonstrate a far-reaching interest in global environmental concerns. This research explores relationships among debt levels, states, and deforestation. Dependency, ecological modernization, and statist perspectives are employed. The models investigate the influence of escalating debt levels of the 1980s on deforestation from 1990 to 1995. Measures of state fiscal capacity and regime type are included to support the contention that states should be more explicitly accounted for in deforestation research. Briefly, there is evidence in support of ecological modernization and statist perspectives, and mixed results with respect to dependency perspectives. The models presented in this research suggest support for hypotheses of an environmental Kuznets curve, and that levels of debt, state fiscal capacity, and regime type influence deforestation rates.