A cross-national study of the ecological worldview of senior consumers

This paper presents the results of a cross-national study into the ecological worldview of senior consumers using the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale. It was designed to examine the extent to which senior respondents in the UK, Germany, Japan and Hungary are endorsing the NEP scale and which factors determine NEP in the four countries under study. Our study is the first of its kind to measure the ecological worldview of older consumers across different nations. Examinations of the overall frequency and mean distributions of the NEP scale showed that the majority of seniors in each country support the NEP statements, but there is no general support for pro-NEP orientation. The relationship between values [using list of values (LOV) scale] and environmental attitudes was tested through a series of regression analyses calculated separately for each country. According to the results, a very weak relationship between some of the LOV values and the NEP scale was found in all the samples. Our study contributes to both cross-cultural environmental attitude research and to consumer studies in general.