Culture and the Independent Self: Obstacles to environmental sustainability?

Highlights

• This paper reports an empirical link between culture and human impacts on Earth.

• Countries where individualism is dominant tend to deny anthropogenic climate change.

• The same countries have a relatively high Ecological Footprint.

• Shifting cultures away from individualism might be necessary for sustainability.

Abstract

The centrality of culture for achieving environmental sustainability has long been underscored by philosophers, psychologists, and social scientists concerned about the environment. However, to date few studies have detected an empirical relationship between cultural dimensions and actual environmental impacts on Earth (e.g., the Ecological Footprint, EF). This study examined the hypothesis that an individualistic society, herein defined as one whose members predominantly believe in forms of independent self-construal, would exhibit a higher environmental impact compared to a less individualistic society, herein defined as one where the prevailing belief is in interdependent selfhood. This study tested three sub-hypotheses. First, due to the dominance of the independent self, people in an individualistic society tend to be less inclined to believe that human activities cause environmental problems (i.e., lower levels of anthropogenic perception). Second, these low levels of anthropogenic perception prevent members of individualistic societies from consciously organizing pro-environmental behavior, resulting in a higher environmental impact. Third, even among countries with similar levels of anthropogenic perception, those in individualistic societies would exhibit higher environmental impacts due to less self-control when facing trade-offs between individual and social benefits. To examine these hypotheses, the study used three indices comprising country-level data including Hofstede’s ‘individualism-collectivism’ scale, EF, and anthropogenic perception of climate change. Results confirm higher EF for more individualistic countries, supporting the main hypothesis and confirming positive results for all subhypotheses. The findings suggest that although the independent self has traditionally been a major cornerstone of western civilization and been valorized in other places worldwide during the modern era, rewriting this culturally-derived concept of self might now be necessary to move towards greater environmental sustainability

Introduction

Environmental problems abound: deforestation, air pollution, water pollution, fossil fuel scarcity, climate change, and ocean acidification. Human society utilizes more resources than Earth can regenerate and emits more waste than Earth can absorb, a compelling hypothesis first put forth in the seminal work The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972). Published almost 50 years ago, the work provocatively suggested that human society would face environmental catastrophe (e.g., drastic decline in population and human welfare) if it continued along its existing trajectory.

The past several decades have witnessed various attempts to change course. Examples include: successful dissemination of scientific research results related to environmental problems (Brechin and Bhandari, 2011), improving energy and resource efficiency relative to economic output (Jackson, 2009), and various international agreements aimed at reducing emissions including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2015 Paris Agreement (Falkner, 2016). Despite these efforts, human society has not been successful in significantly lessening the potential for environmental catastrophe (Randers, 2012). Indeed, recent studies reveal that human society is still tracking the catastrophe trajectory first foretold in The Limits to Growth (Turner, 2008, 2012).

In light of this, an increasing number of scholars surmise that there is an underlying structure (i.e., culture) which has prevented society from changing its trajectory (e.g., Meadows et al., 2004; Klein, 2014). For example, authors of The Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update recently lamented: “The culture tends to deny the possibility of limits by placing a profound faith in the powers of technology, the workings of a free market, and the growth of the economy as the solution to all problems” (Meadows et al., 2004, p. 203, italics added), then continued: “the world faces not a preordained future, but a choice. The choice is between different mental models, which lead logically to different scenarios” (p. 283, italic added). Although that work does define ‘mental models’, we surmise that the general idea is frequently encapsulated by the term ‘cultur’, which we employ here. Yet like ‘mental models’, culture must not be understood as merely an inert or stable set of beliefs or values ‘stored’ inside people but rather as patterns of sense making materialized in actual practices, everyday lives, and societal institutions (see Markus and Kitayama, 2010).

In terms of culture, philosophers, psychologists, and social scientists concerned about the environment have long underscored its importance for sustainability (e.g., White, 1967; Schumacher, 1973; Bowers, 1995, 2002; Orr, 1998; Schultz, 2001; Wang, 2016). These concerns have recently begun to come to the fore in fields of research open to interdisciplinarity, particularly those willing to combine science with social science to explore relationships between people’s beliefs and major environmental problems (Weber, 2010; Adger et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2015). Nonetheless, such emerging discussions surrounding the intersection of culture and environmental problems have often stalled, remained confined to narrow academic circles, and largely failed to capture the attention of the wider public.

We surmise that one major reason for this neglect of culture is that very few studies have detected an empirical relationship between cultural dimensions and actual environmental impacts on Earth (e.g., the Ecological Footprint of Consumption). Without the empirical case, scientists that frequently work from the assumption of cultural objectivity remain skeptical, while social scientists have a difficult time making the bridge to ‘hard’ environmental impacts. We note here that the field of environmental psychology focuses primarily on the effects of cultural dimensions on pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, not on actual environmental impacts on Earth (e.g., Schultz, 2001; Frantz et al., 2005; Arnocky et al., 2007). The absence of findings that link beliefs and impacts prevents all – scientists, social scientists, and the wider public – from affirming the importance of culture in achieving environmental sustainability.

Hoping to fill this gap and forge a preliminary bridge of sorts, this study reports a clear relationship between a particular dimension of culture and Ecological Footprint of Consumption (EF) using country-level quantitative data. Specifically, this study reports higher EF for more individualistic countries. This relationship suggests that the specific form of self-construal (i.e., independent self) observed widely in individualistic societies is one major obstacle to environmental sustainability. Considering that self (i.e., the ‘me’ at the center of experience) is aligned with its social environment and therefore contributes to keeping the society moving along the current trajectory, rewriting this notion of self by introducing practices from less individualistic cultures could potentially contribute to moving human society off the existing catastrophe trajectory.