As global warming and other environmental threats intensify and become more visible, scientists are increasingly questioning the desirability of economic growth as an overarching national and global policy imperative. Several theories in environmental sociology and economics—degrowth, steady-state economy, and “agrowth”—offer compelling arguments that environmental sustainability and continuous economic growth are incompatible. However, there is a shortage of empirical evidence about public opinion on the growth versus environment dilemma, despite its great relevance for the social legitimacy of governments’ approach to the issue. In this article, we aim to narrow this research gap by applying multilevel models to data from the 2017 European Values Study (EVS). We find that the idea of sacrificing a certain level of growth for the sake of the environment receives high levels of support in most European countries. Nevertheless, within countries, we find clear indications of social divides in opinions regarding the growth versus environment dilemma: post-materialists, politically left-leaning people, the better-off, and the higher-educated are in favor of reduced growth, whereas materialists, right-wing individuals, and disadvantaged groups prioritize the economy over ecological concerns. At the country level, economic affluence is associated with greater support for reduced growth, irrespective of the differences in post-materialist values and the ecological situation. In practical terms, our results suggest that politicians can be bolder in promoting substantive environmental measures, even those that reduce growth.

随着全球变暖和其他环境威胁加剧并变得更加明显，科学家们越来越多地质疑经济增长是否可作为国家和全球政策的首要任务。环境社会学和经济学中的几种理论——去增长、稳态经济和“增长”——提供了令人信服的论点，即环境可持续性和持续经济增长是不相容的。然而，关于增长与环境困境的公众舆论缺乏经验证据，尽管它与政府处理该问题的方法的社会合法性非常相关。在本文中，我们旨在通过将多层次模型应用于 2017 年欧洲价值观研究 (EVS) 的数据来缩小这一研究差距。我们发现，为了环境而牺牲一定水平的增长的想法在大多数欧洲国家都得到了高度支持。然而，在国家内部，我们在关于增长与环境困境的意见中发现了明显的社会分歧：后物质主义者、政治左倾者、富裕阶层和受过高等教育的人支持增长放缓，而唯物主义者、右翼个人和弱势群体优先考虑经济而不是生态问题。在国家层面，无论后物质主义价值观和生态状况如何，经济富裕与对增长放缓的更大支持有关。实际上，我们的结果表明，政治家可以更大胆地推动实质性的环境措施，