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A global crisis generated by human-made climate change has added urgency to the need to fully understand human pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) that may help slow down the crisis. Factors influencing personal and public PEBs may or may not be the same. Only a few studies have empirically investigated the determinants of personal and public PEBs simultaneously, but they contain major limitations with mixed results. This study develops a conceptual model for explaining both personal and public PEBs that incorporate demographic, socioeconomic, political, and attitudinal variables, and their direct and indirect effects. Using the latest available data from the 2010 General Social Survey and structural equation modeling (SEM), we tested the determinants of both personal and public PEBs in the United States. The results reveal that environmental concerns, education, and political orientation demonstrate similar significant impacts on both personal and public PEBs, but income, gender, race, urban/rural residency, region, and party affiliation have differential effects on these behaviors. Age, cohort, and religion have no significant effect on both types of behaviors. Our results confirm some existing findings; however, they challenge the findings of much of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing awareness of sustainability issues in industrialized countries has resulted in an unprecedented rise in the number of environmental innovations produced worldwide. However, while this is a general tendency, the amount and importance of environmental innovations is far from consistent across industrialized countries. The influence of countries' policy network styles – referring to which and how interest groups participate in making public policy choices is a dimension that has been subject to growing interest and controversy. We propose that companies from pluralistic countries will generate more environmental innovations, but the importance of environmental innovations will be higher in neo-corporatist countries. Our analysis, based on a longitudinal analysis of 84,274 environmental patents from the United States, Japan, Germany, and the UK during the period 1976–2003, indicates support for our prediction that neo-corporatist countries tend to generate more important environmental innovations than pluralistic countries. Yet, our findings do not support our hypothesis suggesting that pluralistic countries are more likely to generate a higher number of environmental innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention regarding perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has increased in recent years, due to recognition of widespread environmental presence, recognition of a chemical structure that confers resistance to degradation, and reported health concerns. Historical common exposure sources include food, drinking water, occupational circumstances, and products in commerce (e.g., carpeting, clothing, paper products). Early-2000's data showed perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was present in blood samples from nearly all the U.S. general population (>99%). Alterations in industrial manufacturing processes, increased regulatory scrutiny, and advanced water treatment options have reduced the reported human body burden of PFAS in the U.S., including for PFOA. Human serum concentrations of PFOA, which do not identify the source(s) of exposure, have exhibited a substantial decrease (~63%) between the 1999-2000 and the 2013-2014 NHANES monitoring by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). With respect to both noncancer and potential cancer effects that may be associated with reported serum levels of PFOA, conclusions regarding an absence of effects, or insufficient information to suggest adverse effects, prevent a consistent conclusion about the occurrence and magnitude of human health effects. In the last several years, a number of state and federal agencies have developed health advisories or guideline values for drinking water exposure that are in the sub-ppb range. In 2016, a USEPA Health Advisory of 0.07 ppb was released, which stands in contrast to 2016 Health-based Values from Health Canada ranging from 0.2 ppb (PFOA) to 30 ppb, and a few other U.S. states with values even less than that of USEPA (e.g., MN, NJ, VT). Further work is necessary to distinguish in transparent fashion between drinking water levels that intentionally are set on a conservative basis to protect human health vs exposure levels that may be associated with tangible adverse effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prospective, longitudinal analyses revealed that over a 12-year period from ages 6 to 18, individuals who grew up with mothers with more proenvironmental attitudes engaged in more proenvironmental behavior as young adults. A similar marginal association was uncovered between mothers’ proenvironmental behaviors and the proenvironmental behavior of their young adult offspring. Maternal educational attainment, but not political ideology, was also associated with more proenvironmental behavior as children matured. Moreover, childhood time spent outdoors was positively associated with increased environmentally responsible behavior in young adulthood. Interestingly, one’s own childhood proenvironmental behavior and attitude, at least as assessed at age 6, bear little on one’s eventual proenvironmental behavior as a young adult. Finally, among this set of childhood factors, maternal education and childhood time spent outdoors were independent predictors of positive changes in environmental behavior from early childhood to young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public servants are expected to be good stewards of resources, including the energy and environmental resources consumed in a public organization’s day-to-day operations. Many government organizations have enacted policies to mitigate the environmental impact of their operations. Even in the absence of formal policies, however, individual public employees might engage in a number of discretionary, pro-environmental behaviors known as eco-initiatives. What motivational factors cause a public employee to exhibit eco-initiative? To answer this question, we draw on a theoretical framework based on connectedness to nature, organizational commitment, public service motivation (PSM), and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We use employee-level data from a large city in the southeast United States to examine employee participation in individual eco-initiatives. We contextualize these discretionary initiatives as interesting forms of OCB, which are directed toward the environment (OCB-E). Our findings suggest that connectedness to nature, organizational commitment, and PSM are significant predictors of eco-initiative in the public workplace. In addition, we find that PSM conditions the impact of organizational commitment on eco-initiatives for certain types of employees. We conclude with a discussion that underscores the importance of individual employee motivation in discretionary efforts that advance OCB-E and effective public stewardship generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some environmental and religious scholars, religious leaders, and media figures have claimed there has been a 'greening of Christianity' in the United States since the mid-1990s. Such a trend would be socially significant, as the integration of Christian values and environmental values may invigorate both domains. Using nationally representative data from the 1993 and 2010 General Social Surveys, we analyze how green self-identified Christians in the U.S. general public are in their pro-environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Using structural equation modeling, we find no clear evidence of a greening of Christianity among rank-and-file Christians in the general public between 1993 and 2010. Indeed, the patterns of our results are quite similar to those from earlier decades, which documented that self-identified Christians reported lower levels of environmental concern than did non-Christians and nonreligious individuals. We did find evidence of some greening among evangelical Protestants, especially relative to mainline Protestants, between 1993 and 2010. We close by suggesting a few fruitful avenues for further research in this area via variable-oriented, case-oriented, and experimental studies and discussing some theoretical implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1960s, many scholars have characterized Western Christianity as at odds with environmentalism and ecological values. Yet since the mid-1990s, many observers claim there has been a “greening of Christianity” in the United States. Using nationally representative data from the 2010 General Social Survey, we analyzed how pro-environmental self-identified Christians in the U.S. general public are in their self-reported environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Using structural equation modeling, we find that self-identified Christians report lower levels of environmental concern than do non-Christians. Among Christians, religiosity relates positively to pro-environmental behaviors but not to pro-environmental attitudes or beliefs. These results suggest that this presumed greening of Christianity has not yet translated into a significant greening of pro-environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of rank-and-file Christians in the U.S. general public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are obvious economic predictors of ability and willingness to invest in environmental sustainability. Yet, given that environmental decisions represent trade-offs between present sacrifices and uncertain future benefits, psychological factors may also play a role in country-level environmental behavior. Gott’s principle suggests that citizens may use perceptions of their country’s age to predict its future continuation, with longer pasts predicting longer futures. Using country- and individual-level analyses, we examined whether longer perceived pasts result in longer perceived futures, which in turn motivate concern for continued environmental quality. Study 1 found that older countries scored higher on an environmental performance index, even when the analysis controlled for country-level differences in gross domestic product and governance. Study 2 showed that when the United States was framed as an old country (vs. a young one), participants were willing to donate more money to an environmental organization. The findings suggest that framing a country as a long-standing entity may effectively prompt proenvironmental behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Individual household and travel behaviors represent a sizeable contribution to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. This paper investigates people''s knowledge of these behaviors and perceptions of these behaviors'' impact in causing and mitigating climate change. In the present study, a sample of college students were asked to list the behaviors they perform that cause global warming (GW) and the behaviors they could perform to mitigate GW, to rate the impact of the behaviors in terms of their effect on causing or mitigating GW, and to rate their intention to perform each of the behaviors. Results revealed that this sample was well aware of the effect of driving on GW. However, participants underestimated the relative impact of adjusting the thermostat and eating meat on GW and overestimated the impact of littering on causing GW. Although knowledge about GW-mitigating behaviors was not consistently related to behavioral intention, belief that a behavior mitigated GW (whether accurate or not) was strongly related to intention to perform that behavior. Specifically, correlations between belief in the mitigating potential of a behavior and intention were relatively high for adjusting the thermostat, reducing meat consumption, and several behaviors that do not mitigate GW, but were relatively low for reducing driving and not littering. Practical implications and comparisons with previous literature are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The authors discuss environmental literacy in the United States and present a brief summary of the results of a major national study designed to attain a baseline measure of environmental literacy among middle school students in the United States The authors include events that led up to the study and desctibe future directions for environmental literacy assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Federal and state environmental agencies are naturally interested in understanding both motivations for corporate environmental behavior (CEB) and likely business responses to available policy interventions. Consequently, the legal and social science research communities’ recent interest in corporate environmental responsibility is welcome, and in fact, is increasingly supported by EPA through science to achieve results (STAR) grants. It is imperative that this type of research shapes the direction of environmental policy for the future. However, to do so, it needs to be well focused and understandable to policy makers. The principal purpose of this paper is to help scholars focus their research to make their results more useful to decision makers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]