Abstract

Scholars who study environmental problems across the social sciences often require a measure of the lens through which people filter information. Many scales have been created to serve in this analytical role, including the New Ecological Paradigm, the Connectedness to Nature Scale, environmentalist identity and environmental movement identity, and the cultural cognition scales. To our knowledge, no study compares them in a single sample. We used a national Internet sample to examine the measures’ predictive powers in explaining a range of environmental behaviors. Connectedness to Nature and environmentalist identity were the strongest predictors of pro-environmental behavior in our sample, and our findings also suggested a difference in private versus public behaviors. Environmentalist identity was slightly stronger than the Connectedness to Nature in predicting public behaviors, while Connectedness to Nature was the strongest predictor of private behaviors. The New Ecological Paradigm and the cultural cognition scales were weaker predictors.

抽象的

研究整个社会科学领域中的环境问题的学者经常需要人们从中过滤信息的方法。已经创建了许多量表来发挥这种分析作用，包括新生态范式，与自然的连接量表，环境主义者的身份和环境运动的身份以及文化认知量表。据我们所知，没有一项研究可以在一个样本中对它们进行比较。我们使用了一个国家互联网样本来检验这些措施在解释一系列环境行为方面的预测能力。在我们的样本中，与自然的联系和环保主义者是最有利于环保行为的指标，我们的发现也表明私人行为与公共行为之间存在差异。在预测公共行为方面，环保主义者的身份略强于与自然的联系，而与自然的联系则是私人行为的最强预测因子。新生态范式和文化认知量表是较弱的预测指标。