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Mental health professionals can help patients understand exceptional and paranormal experiences, integrate them into day-to-day life, and cope with confusion and anxiety that sometimes accompany them. However, a broader clinical perspective and specialized training in clinical parapsychology is needed. In the first part of the paper I argue that psychiatry as currently practiced is limited because it embraces a strictly materialist paradigm, emphasizes treatment over prevention, and relies principally on pharmaceuticals that are often ineffective and/or unsafe. A paradigm shift in psychiatry is taking place that will soon lead to novel concepts of energy and innovations in therapeutic approaches. In the second part of the paper I review the ongoing debate over consciousness, implications of novel understandings of energy for psychiatry, and research findings in physics, neuroscience and parapsychology that are contributing to a postmaterialist paradigm in psychiatry. I comment on an important problem in the philosophy of science called Hempel's dilemma and argue that future scientific theories of consciousness will probably encounter similar conceptual limits to those faced by current theories. Following Beauregard, Trent and Schwartz (2018) I argue that different categories of theories may be needed to adequately explain the variety of human experiences and I propose an integral paradigm that acknowledges the validity of both conventional scientific explanations and postmaterialist theories of consciousness. Finally, I discuss implications of postmaterialism for research, education and training in psychiatry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) has a tradition for being among the most respected national police organisations globally. More recent political events in Hong Kong have however placed the HKPF in highly visible public order situations. A wide array of political factions have emerged as a consequence of the handover of control in Hong Kong, many of which have involved young people protesting the curtailment of democratic rights. In this paper, we utilise Wave 7 of the World Values Survey (n = 2075). We utilise Inglehart's (1971. The silent revolution in Europe: intergenerational change in post-industrial societies. American political science review, 65 (4), 991–1017) concept of postmaterialism to examine how far young people's more negative attitudes to the police can be underpinned by cohort-based (or generational) explanations. Our findings identify associations between postmaterialist values and lower confidence in the police. Those that favoured stricter immigration controls, experienced higher fear of crime, perceived drug selling in their area, and consumed certain types of media (notably television and new media) were also less likely to have confidence in the HKPF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inglehart's theory of postmaterialism outlines the influence of intergenerational value change on social change. While the sense of security during a formative period is an essential context for postmaterialist values to be bred among the younger generation in democratic states, social protests and political instability are common in some hybrid regimes. Yet how social protests in a hybrid regime interfere in the building of postmaterialism and its association with other value has been underresearched. Based on the data collected from the seventh wave of the World Value Survey in Hong Kong in 2018 (N = 1,031), this paper investigates the role of a critical event—the Umbrella Movement in 2014—in moderating the relationship between a postmaterialist orientation and perceived quality of elections in Hong Kong. It reveals that the negative relationship between a postmaterialist orientation and perceived quality of Hong Kong's election was stronger among the people who supported and participated in the Umbrella Movement. Moreover, the moderation effect of the Umbrella Movement was stronger among young people. This paper underscores the context of socialisation in influencing both a postmaterialist orientation and intergenerational change occurring during a critical event, which sheds light on the relationship between value change and authoritarian resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents several published articles related to public opinion research. The paper The Decline of Over-Time Comparability in the National Election Studies by Paul R. Abramson, uses data from the National Election Studies conducted by the University of Michigan to demonstrate that over time there has been a decline in the comparability of different items. Items measuring public policy preferences and support for the political systems have changed considerably since 1952 making it difficult to compare data from different surveys. The study Post-Materialism From a Pleasant Perspective by Leslie E. Anderson provides an extension of post-materialist theory to poor and less developed countries. Data collected from the poor in Costa Rica and Nicaragua indicate that the poor are politically motivated primarily by economic reasons, while the affluent who no longer feel economically insecure mainly act for value-oriented and nonmaterialist reasons. The article Public Perceptions and the Dilemmas of Party Reform in the USSR by Donna Bahry and Brian D. Silver examines individual differences in the perceptions of honesty and competence of local and central party leaders in the Soviet Union.

The notion of a 'third food regime' implies simultaneous processes of further global concentration and integration and at the same time resistance through new emerging producer-consumer relations. This paper examines these processes by looking at Austria over the last 30 years. While direct producer-consumer cooperatives established at an early point, today forms of community supported agriculture (CSA) are rare. This paper explains this by identifying a shift of the entire food system from 'food from nowhere' to 'food from here.' The account follows the early emergence of alternative food networks through the political appeal to consumer patriotism in connection with Austria joining the EU, to a sustained positioning of retail chains with regional and national food products. The paper argues that this satisfies the needs of a large proportion of consumers and discourages the emergence of new food initiatives. The paper follows the development of different approaches and their transformations until today. Thus a picture evolves of changing, and partly progressing consumer-producer relations in response to wider societal and political transformation processes. The results explain why the movement towards CSA is currently weak in Austria, but demonstrate at the same time how alternative food networks may contribute to a transformation of the food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of works on the rural-environmental connection can be found at present. However, their overview and classification are needed -- this is the guiding idea of this paper. We distinguish three approaches to the rural-environmental connection and label them scientific approach, environmentalist approach, and development approach. in the paper, theories of environmental concern (post-materialism, paradigm shift, and ecological modernisation) are discussed at first and then a classification of works is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological tradition of thinking about the middle class has made a very significant contribution to the understanding of politics in advanced contemporary societies. This paper approaches the case of Spain within a conceptual and empirical framework derived from that work. Its point of departure is that most analysis of social class in sociology and political science to date has relied on class schemes that attempt to explain single subjects or dimensions of particular phenomena. Political sociology, for example, has produced numerous single-dimension studies on issues such as voting, political participation, and political values or attitudes. These kinds of study tend to produce neat and unambiguous conclusions. A more nuanced picture emerges from the present study, which adopts an alternative, multidimensional analysis. The study compares the behaviour of social classes, and above all of fractions of the middle class, in each of the four areas of voting, political ideology, political participation, and political values. Doing so, the results present a much more complex picture of middle-class politics than has traditionally been available. The significance of these results is twofold. First, we see that an accurate description of the political behaviour of the middle class cannot be reduced to a dichotomous unitary versus heterogeneous dilemma, or to conservative versus leftist views, since the political stand of this social class is essentially 'ambivalent'. Secondly, these results strongly suggest that theoretical work on this and similar types of phenomena should more frequently take into account the complexity of actually observed behaviour, rather than relying on the often thinner or simpler patterns from which sociological knowledge has too often been derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the impact of economic affluence and objective environmental conditions on an individual's concern for the environment across Greek regions and over time. Our data originate from three nation-wide surveys conducted in Greece between 2005 and 2007 (N = 3592 individuals). By employing a multilevel hierarchical modelling technique, we are able to check for the influence of micro-level and macro-level predictor variables simultaneously. We find that an individual's environmental concern is largely influenced by micro-level variables and, in particular, positively influenced by family income. Macro-level variables, such as community affluence and objective environmental conditions, turned out to be statistically non-significant. Furthermore, we find that the effects of the various predictors on an individual's concern for the environment vary significantly over time and across regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among other social and political changes, post-materialist theory anticipated the need to strengthen democracy in political institutions in post-industrial societies. This change in political values would mean that in addition to growth in post-materialist values, parties would be pushed to take an alternative view of politics that would entail greater assimilation of democratic procedures. This paper partially and empirically tests the validity of this explanation in four European party systems. The Greens are the focus, since they are considered the parties that best fit the post-materialist profile. In particular, the paper aims to ascertain whether the Greens display a significantly better positioning in respect to support for democracy and the congruence of their voters than other parties, as theory leads us to believe. The explanation of higher levels of party congruence is also expected to be related to post-materialist party features. The findings of this research did not show enough evidence to validate our theoretical expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Politik is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using the institutional approach, this paper examines the influence of social progress orientation on innovative entrepreneurship from an international perspective. Using a multiple linear regression model with cross-sectional information from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the Indices of Social Development, the World Values Survey, the Hofstede Centre, the United Nations Development Programme and World Development Indicators, we find that social progress orientation dimensions such as voluntary spirit, survival vs. self-expression values and power distance were related to entrepreneurial activity. More specifically, the main findings demonstrate that high voluntary spirit had a positive and statistically significant impact on innovative early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA). In addition, necessity-driven TEA is highly discouraged in those societies with high voluntary spirit and self-expression values, whereas larger power distance increased the entrepreneurial activity driven by necessity. Based on these results, this study advances the literature by introducing and analyzing the concept of social progress orientation, by examining the factors that influence innovative entrepreneurial activity in light of an institutional approach. Also, this research could be useful for designing policies to foster entrepreneurial activity in different national and regional environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an ongoing debate concerning the dimensionality of Inglehart's (1971, 1977, 1981, 1990) concept of materialism-postmaterialism. According to Inglehart, this concept is unidimensional, distinct from the traditional left-right political belief continuum, and central to explaining the changes taking place in the values of advanced industrial societies. To date, the debate has sought answers in different item sets, factor analytic solutions, and rotations. This paper approaches the problem through psychological models of social values. Materialism-postmaterialism, it is argued, involves a prioritizing of values from two orthogonal value orientations which have grown out of the work of Rokeach (1973): national strength and order and international harmony and equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has a twofold aim: to disentangle the question of party decline, analysing the current meanings and the empirical evidence offered by the literature; to highlight the different and even opposite outcomes of such decline. As far as the party crisis is concerned, contrary to a shared knowledge it is difficult to give a final word. It is suggested that the crisis concerns more a type of party rather than the party per se. Second, the challenges to the party are analysed. In the last decade a convergent attack against the traditional parties has been carried on: on one side, by the new social movements and their partisan representatives, the left-libertarian or New Politics parties; on the other side, by the newly emerged extreme right parties. This paper tries to demonstrate that both types of party are the by-products of the same structural conditions and both provide a (different) answer to the crisis of the party's expressive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to our understanding of what lifestyle factors affect the social status of women and men in contemporary postmaterialist societies. We examine the dimensions and determinants of social status qualifiers among Swedish people using a survey of 1,650 Swedish respondents who ranked the importance of 14 qualifiers for the social status of a woman and a man. The analysis showed surprisingly strong similarities in what factors affect the social status of women and men - both in the importance of individual status qualifiers and in the three underlying status dimensions: The highest-ranked dimension included status qualifiers related to external material resources and properties. The second most important dimension comprised interactional resources such as manners, looks, being married and having children. The third dimension concerned the importance of interest and engagement in politics, the environment, and fine art, which were of the least importance for social status. The few significant differences in ascriptions of status for a woman or a man were rather gender stereotypical. In addition, the analysis revealed some significant differences in status perceptions among the respondents: Gender, class, educational background, and country of birth were among the main determinants of such differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary research on young people and politics portrays their political engagement as: individualised not collectivist; issue-driven not ideology-driven and postmaterialist instead of materialist. This shift towards ‘lifestyle politics’ is assumed to be universal among young people, rather than shaped by traditional social cleavages and structures. This paper investigates these assumptions and asks whether young people's experience of national economic austerity and increasing material inequality shapes the everyday political issues they identify with, and how they understand inequality and the distribution of resources in their societies. The analysis is based on responses to an open-ended question on key political issues of importance, in surveys of representative samples of 1200 young people aged 16–29 in 3 countries: Australia, the UK and the USA. Afterwards, we conducted online discussion groups with 107 young people, in which they were asked to discuss changes in the nature of equality in their societies. The findings show that there is a complex interdependence between individualised, everyday understandings of economic changeandan identity-based politics of equal rights. However, there are nuanced differences in understanding inequality, dependent on young people's national location and socioeconomic background. The implications these findings have for young people's future political engagement are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how people engage in politics, and what motivates them to do so, has been an ongoing concern in the social science literature. Over the past decade, scholarly interest in boycotts and buycotts, which collectively comprise political consumerism—the deliberate purchase or avoidance of products for political or ethical reasons—has increased. However, these activities not been well conceptualized, and it is not clear what motivates people to engage in political consumerism. In this paper, I theorize that postmaterialist values increase the likelihood of engaging in political consumerism in the United States. To test this expectation, I use original, nationally representative U.S. survey data, and I find that postmaterialist values significantly increase the likelihood of engaging in political consumerism, while materialist values not, with controls in place for partisanship, ideology, and other democratic norms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The exchanges that individualist, prosocial, and competitive actors will make and the kind of negotiations they will carry out in dyads and power structures are predicted here for the first time. The predictions are generated by bridging two previously independent streams of thought, network exchange theory and social value orientations. In so doing, this article shows that formal, mathematical theory and metric predictions are not threatened by using multiple actors with contrasting utilities. Results offered here are hypothetical and provide a baseline against which empirical studies can be compared. A later paper will compare these predictions with experiments now ongoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary popularity of motorcycling has resulted in a booming manufacturing industry as well as the emergence of a unique culture revolving around very specific forms of material cultural capital. Industry research focusing exclusively on the economic impact of motorcycling gravely underestimates the social and cultural consequences that have been brought about as a result of these ecological alternatives in personal mobility. As routine riding in overcrowded urban environments becomes more and more problematic, motorcyclists find themselves yearning for the self-exile available through the wide open spaces of desert environs in order to optimize the emancipatory potential of this sensual technological Bohemian experience on two wheels. To that end, off road motorcyclists have organized rallies such as the Dakar in unique geological environments to provide riders the technology-driven mystical catharsis they are seeking. Using evidence gathered from ethnographic fieldwork, film portrayals, and contemporary public policies; the paper demonstrates that the widespread popularity of off-road motorcycling and related intercultural harmony represents a significant threat to the routinization of conflict driving the hegemonic world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper gives an interdisciplinary overview of the emerging field of spirituality and business. It uses insights from business ethics, theology, neuroscience, psychology, gender studies, and philosophy to economics, management, organizational science, and banking and refers to different religious convictions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, the Baha'i faith, and the North-American aboriginal worldview. The authors argue that the materialistic management paradigm has failed. They explore new values for post-materialistic management: frugality, deep ecology, trust, reciprocity, responsibility for future generations, and authenticity. Within this framework profit and growth are no longer ultimate aims but elements in a wider set of values. Similarly, cost-benefit calculations are no longer the essence of management but are part of a broader concept of wisdom in leadership. Spirit-driven businesses require intrinsic motivation for serving the common good and using holistic evaluation schemes for measuring success. The Palgrave Handbook of Business and Spirituality, edited by the authors, is a response to developments that simultaneously challenge the "business as usual" mindset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measurement of postmaterial values includes measuring of the views on the preservation of peace, freedom of speech, environmental protection, tolerance and everything else that is contrary to the concept of measuring the material values, that is physical and economic variables. Measurement of postmaterial values is based on the application of 4 or 12 items scale that refers to the materialism or postmaterialism in certain country. There are several issues and limitations in the application of postmaterial values measurement scale which can cause significant error, in other words bias in measurement. One of the most interesting issues is the impact of question order change on the measurement results of postmaterial values. Using the results of empirical research it is shown that this effect is significant and, also it is particularly examined the intensity of this effect considering gender and level of education based on the sample of respondents from urban Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to study the change of the relation between religiosity and political attitudes in the first decade after the fall of the communism. The basic theoretical background is Lipset and Rokkan's cleavage theory (1967), as well as the secularization thesis. On the empirical basis of the 1990 and 1999 waves of the European Values Study, the changing effects of religiosity on party preference, left-right ideological self-identification and political participation are investigated. As alternative explanatory factor to "cleavages", Inglehart's postmateralism-index (1990) was also introduced in the analysis. The micro-level scrutiny of contextual effects of denominational affiliation and the level of secularization is employed for explaining cross-country differences at the macro level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on value change by advancing a new explanation of the relationship between political parties and generational-based values in advanced industrialized nations. Through multivariate analysis of World Values and other survey data from 29 countries, we show that the relationship between generations and values tends to vary between polities dominated by major parties and those in which many parties achieve electoral success. Green parties enhance the uptake of postmaterialist values and speed the decline of materialist ones, particularly among younger generations, by promoting a political discourse and agenda that contributes to the formative experiences underpinning value change. This research suggests that institutional structures and political parties need to be given far greater prominence in theories of postmaterial value change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports exploratory research about tendencies toward postmaterialism in university students. This paper used the theoretical framework proposed by Inglehart regarding three categories of leisure: postmaterialist, materialist and common. Students from a Spanish university (N = 1036) completed questionnaires that evaluated their materialist-postmaterialist values, how often they practiced the activities included in each category of leisure and the motivational factors involved in them. The results revealed that university students showed a tendency toward postmaterialism. Further, relationships were found between materialist-postmaterialist values and categories of leisure. This study results suggested that the tendency toward postmaterialist values may be a factor in structuring the leisure patterns of young Spanish university students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon the social science literature to evaluate whether materialist/post-materialist, environmental, and scientific/technological worldviews predict levels of support for biotechnology applications. The novelty of this research is two-fold: 1) it incorporates the post-materialist hypothesis in risk perception models, and 2) it evaluates the effects of the these three worldviews simultaneously. Data from a regional southwest telephone survey in the United States conducted in Spring 2004 were used to investigate whether these three worldviews were related to support of various animal and plant biotechnology applications. The results illustrated that post-materialist values were not significantly related to support for animal or plant biotechnology applications. However, environmental and science and technology measures were related to support. One of the new ecological paradigm items, "humans have the right to modify nature," was consistently related to support for animal and plant biotechnology applications, and anti-anthropocentric values were related to support for two plant applications. General attitudes toward science and technology were related to support for both animal and plant biotechnology applications. The results provide evidence that perceptions of these applications are multi-dimensional and that respondents conceptualize animal and plant biotechnology applications differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other than economic factors are at play. The objective of this paper is to explore how postmaterialism may explain these differences. A distinction is made between nascent entrepreneurship, new business formation and a combination of the two, referred to as total entrepreneurial activity, as defined within the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The model is also tested for the rate of established businesses. The measure for postmaterialism is based upon Inglehart’s four-item postmaterialism index. A set of economic, demographic and social factors is included to investigate the independent role postmaterialism plays in predicting entrepreneurial activity levels. In particular, per capita income is used to control for economic effects. Education rates at both secondary and tertiary levels are used as demographic variables. Finally, life satisfaction is included to control for social effects. Data from 27 countries ( GEM, World Values Survey and other sources) are used to test the hypotheses. Findings confirm the significance of postmaterialism in predicting total entrepreneurial activity and more particularly, new business formation rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ronald Ingelhart's contention that post-materialist values arising from increases in GDP per capita ensue from greater affluence and economic security in industrialized countries is examined here. Using the Euro-Barometer dataset, this paper tests variations across eight European countries to determine if post-materialist values: (a) actually shaped citizens' attitudes toward social welfare policies hence its increases; (b) influenced ideological partisanship preferences and dominance of leftist parties; and (c) led to increases in transfer payments when left-of-centre parties are in control. The results of a pooled cross-sectional time series analysis indicate that economic development is negatively associated with social security expansion, but bears a positive relationship to post-materialist values. It also shows that post-materialist values exert only moderate, rather than ‘strong’ influences on ideological political preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inglehart's thesis of the 'Silent Revolution' states that the priorities of Western publics have gradually shifted from materialist toward postmaterialist values. An important aspect of this thesis is the socialization hypothesis, predicting that one's (post)-materialist values are stable during adulthood. This paper tests this hypothesis using panel data for the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. For this purpose several multiple indicator two-wave models are developed including (i) a correction for the dependency between the indicators (because of the ranking of the items) and (ii) item specific factors. Application of these models to the data indicates a strong stability of postmaterialist values during adulthood, especially for the United States and the Netherlands. The implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common knowledge that in times of recession people lose confidence in the government and in other state institutions. Political scientists have pointed out that a loss of faith in a particular government or parliament does not necessarily amount to an erosion of civic culture as the cultural foundation of liberal democracy is broader. However, the recent recession has been unusually severe and long-lasting and some countries have only just started to climb out of it. It is an open question whether civic culture is so resilient that it can even weather exceptionally serious economic crises such as the recent one. As often happens in times of crisis, young people have been most affected by the recent crisis, and one may thus expect this age group to show the steepest drops in civic values. The current article examined the impact of the recession on the civic values of different generations across a selection of European and western states. Analyses of both short and long-term trends based on European Social Survey (ESS) and World Values Survey (WVS) data showed that social trust, tolerance, active civic participation and post-materialism values, as civic culture indicators, are not susceptible to economic downturns, confirming the idea that civic values need to be distinguished from political trust. Correlational analysis provided additional support for this finding as it showed no links between changes in civic culture indicators and changes in economic performance. However, civic dispositions were found to be related to overall levels of economic prosperity and performance, indicating that such dispositions are not wholly immune to material conditions. This led us to surmise that civic culture is more susceptible to enduring processes affecting people's life chances and well-being than to fleeting phenomena such as economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent political movements in Hong Kong suggest a postmaterial value shift in the younger generation, from pursuing material affluence to a greater concern for autonomy, self‐expression, and quality of life. This study examined the values and career aspirations of Generation‐Y tourism professionals through postmaterialism and intergenerational value change. In‐depth interviews revealed differences in the views of older and younger Gen‐Y and three types of career aspirations: Corporate job, Entrepreneurship, and "Slash" careers. Findings demonstrated the material/postmaterial shifts from teenage to mid‐adulthood, and how values were shaped by: student versus working life, tourism work experience, social changes, and specific social events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many Australians agree with the need for COVID‐19 restrictions and lockdowns, a vocal minority of citizens loudly voice opposition to government restrictions, characterised as impositions on 'free speech' and impacting the Australian economy. National data from the 2020/21 Australian Survey of Social and Attitudes and Tasmanian survey data enable an examination of those who support or oppose health initiatives aimed at minimising the impact of the pandemic. The majority of Australians believed government imposed restrictions were 'about right', although women were more likely than men to be concerned about the health implications of COVID‐19. Tasmanian data show that controlling for social background, those who prioritise the economy are less likely than those concerned about the health implications of COVID‐19 to wear masks in public, less likely to be tested in case they have to self‐isolate, less likely to check in, and less likely to be vaccinated. Alternatively, higher trust in university research, and trust in scientists as a source of information about COVID‐19 was positively associated with attitudes and behaviour designed to reduce the transmission of COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers: Revista de Sociologia is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study, we explored implicit materialistic and postmaterialistic values, focusing on the relationship between these values and environmental behaviors. Participants were 60 Chinese students, who completed via self-report the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Environmental Behaviors Questionnaire, along with a situation simulation experiment to measure their actual environmental behavior. Our results provide the first evidence for an application of the IAT in research focused on materialism and postmaterialism. We found that implicit postmaterialism significantly predicted proenvironmental behavioral intention in a Chinese context, and implicit materialism was a strong predictor of actual proenvironmental behaviors (i.e., avoidance of paper waste). These results indicate that, for Chinese people, materialism is an important motivation for their actual proenvironmental behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate cosmopolitan attitudes among the people often considered the most cosmopolitan - the elite. Studying the typical class of frequent travellers provides a particularly good opportunity to study the relationship between transnational activities and cosmopolitanism. We also comprehensively investigate the link between postmaterialist values and cosmopolitan attitudes. We test our arguments using an original dataset that includes a relatively large sample of the German positional top elite in the years 2011 and 2012. A comparison between these data and data from a general population survey shows that while transnational activities affect the attitudes of ordinary citizens, increased travelling does not make elites more cosmopolitan. We discuss several reasons why this might be the case. We also observe that postmaterialist values and the ideological environment of the elite play a key role. Finally, we tentatively suggest that cosmopolitan elites do not endanger national social cohesion, as some fear they might. We show that cosmopolitanism and localism are not mutually exclusive and that members of the German elite feel even more attached to their nation than ordinary Germans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many variables crucial to the social sciences are not directly observed but instead are latent and measured indirectly. When an external variable of interest affects this measurement, estimates of its relationship with the latent variable will then be biased. Such violations of "measurement invariance" may, for example, confound true differences across countries in postmaterialism with measurement differences. To deal with this problem, researchers commonly aim at "partial measurement invariance"; that is, to account for those differences that may be present and important. To evaluate this importance directly through sensitivity analysis, the "EPC-interest" was recently introduced for continuous data. However, latent variable models in the social sciences often use categorical data. The current paper therefore extends the EPC-interest to latent variable models for categorical data and demonstrates its use in example analyses of U.S. Senate votes as well as respondent rankings of postmaterialism values in the World Values Study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of today's young people are politically engaged and increasingly supportive of progressive political causes. This is most evident in the youth leadership of the Green wave of environmental activism that gathered momentum in 2019. However, we know surprisingly little about the values that drive this mobilisation. In this article, we investigate the link between environmental activism and the emergence of 'young cosmopolitans' as a political force. Using data from the 2017 European Values Study, we analyse the views of 1,546 18-25-year-olds across ten established European democracies. We find that postmaterialist values, cosmopolitan attitudes and engagement in environmental politics are closely connected; young cosmopolitans are very civically and politically active; and, young environmental activists are particularly likely to be female with high educational attainment levels. Conversely, a significant minority of European youth (disproportionately male with lower educational attainment) are more materialist and nationalist. In the discussion, we explore the role of education and the need to re-think the climate emergency locally – connecting threats to the environment to challenges young people face in their everyday lives. We also explain how the persistence of postmaterialist values amongst younger generations through the Great Recession, suggests that the Green wave will continue post COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that people with higher income are more concerned about environmental problems is deeply entrenched in economics and some other disciplines. Studies have shown a positive income effect on the intention to pay for environmental improvement. Perception of environmental risk, however, follows a different pattern of variation. This paper demonstrates a negative income effect, using data extracted from a cross-national social survey involving 36 countries. An inverse relationship is observed between people's reported income and their perception of long-term environmental risks associated with climate change, genetic modification of crops and the use of nuclear power. Lower-income individuals see the potential environmental consequences of these human interventions as extremely dangerous—more so than the higher-income ones. Richer people are relatively less concerned about the long-term environmental risks. A possible explanation is that material insecurity reinforces the feeling of risk and danger. People living under more difficult economic situation are more vulnerable and see greater danger. A key implication of these findings is that concern does not follow the ability to pay. People facing higher environmental risks are potentially less able to afford risk reduction support despite that they are likely to be in greater need for it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]