Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors

Transcription

1 Articles I Introduction Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors A Nine-Country Survey in Southeast Asia Faculty of International Studies and Regional Development, University of Niigata Prefecture / Assistant Professor After the Industrial Revolution, human activities have altered the nature at an unprecedented pace; the current environmental problems, more or less, are the consequences of those activities desiring for physical comfort, personal security, relief from labor, mobility, and so forth. Over the past four decades, academia has worked extensively on facilitating the understanding needed to change human behaviors that contribute to solving environmental problems. Put it simple, the actions that contribute to the improvement of environmental problems can be defined as proenvironmental behaviors/activities. Recent developments in theory and empirics have investigated individuals' motivations underlying pro-environmental activities. The central presumption of the literature is that, people's environmental behaviors are directly influenced by the degree of their environmental concerns, i.e., their individual environmental awareness, value judgment, and subjective recognition towards environmental problems. To be exact, people are likely to become engaged in pro-environmental behaviors to the extent that environmental problems have threatened various objects they value, and they are aware of the harmful impacts. This insight is largely captured in a series of studies of Value Belief Norm (VBN) theory (e.g., Stern et. al, 1993; Stern and Dietz, 1994; Stern et. al, 1995; Stern, 1999; Stern et. al, 1999; Stern, 2000). Those studies argued that environmental attitudes are the results of a person's more general set of values, which are further classified into three distinct dimensions, i.e., egoistic, altruistic, biospheric. Ebigase 471, Higashi-ku, Niigata-shi, Niigata , Japan. TEL/FAX: address: lijia@unii.ac.jp 154 THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

2 The above-mentioned presumption stimulated a line of empirical studies which investigated the genesis of individuals' environmental concerns, especially, identifying the relationships between environmental indices with various socio-economic factors including age, gender, education, income, and residence (e.g., Arcury and Christianson, 1990; Baldssare and Katz, 1992; Howell and Laska, 1992; Adeola, 1994; Lyons and Breakwell, 1994; Davidson and Freudenburg, 1996; Zelezny et al., 2000; Aytulkasapoglu and Ecevit, 2002; Dietz et al., 2002; Hunter et al., 2004; and Deng et al., 2006). These factors consist of the social bases of environmental concerns and behaviors. To date, though plenty, the vast majority of the empirical studies addressed pro-environmental behaviors in developed countries. Regarding developing countries, there are few such studies due to the difficulties to conduct large-scale survey. In recent years, Asian countries have been facing serious environmental problems due to rapid economic growth and urbanization. They will most likely use all of potential strategies available to solve the pressing environmental challenges. In addition, the literature found that the structure of environmental values in Asian countries differs from those in Western countries (e.g., Aoyagi-Usui et al., 2003). In that case, social factors affecting environmental behaviors might be different between Asian and Western countries. However, there is hardly any empirical study addressing the issues of pro-environmental behaviors in Asia. This study is thus an attempt in this respect. Under the framework of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the Southeast Asian countries have been playing a leading role in the process of regional integration in Asia. ASEAN member countries have stressed on enhancing environmental cooperation for sustainable development. Thus, it is reasonable to examine the environmental issues of ASEAN as a whole. The ASEAN member countries have especially addressed the cooperation in environmental education. They developed action programmes of environmental education since the first International Conference on Environmental Education held in Belgrade in According to the latest ASEAN Environmental Education Action Plan (AEEAP) , ASEAN's move toward regional cooperation on the environment dates back to 1977 with drafting of the first ASEAN Subregional Environment Programme (ASEP I). This was followed by ASEP II ( ) and ASEP III ( ). All these three programmes had, as one of six priority programme areas, Environmental Education, Training and Information. The latest AEEAP , succeeding the AEEAP , clearly states its aim to improve people's awareness of environmental issues through formal and informal education, and consequently enable them to participate as active and informed citizens in pursuing sustainable development. Therefore, this study will highlight the importance of environmental education (defined as the diffusion of knowledge in this study), in improving environmental concerns and consequently pro-environmental behaviors in ASEAN countries. Specifically, this study will investigate the following relationships. 1. The relationship between various social factors such as gender, education, resi- Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 155

3 dence, income and environmental concerns/behaviors. 2. The relationship between the accessibility to environment-related knowledge and environmental concerns/behaviors. Since it is difficult to measure the effects of environmental education directly, we consider that information access roughly captures the diffusion degree of relevant knowledge through diverse routes, both formal and informal education. 3. The relationship between environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviors at two levels, private-level behaviors related to the household consumption as well as public-level behaviors leading to public policy advocacy. The rest of this paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents the methodology of this study. The detailed data description is also provided in the section. In Section 3, we report the empirical results and their implications. Section 4 concludes the study. II Method 2.1. ASEAN Barometer 2009 The present study is based on a questionnaire survey called "ASEAN Barometer 2009", the very first cross-country research project investigating public opinions on environmental issues and health risks in ASEAN member countries. The project encompassed nine countries in ASEAN, i.e., Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The questionnaire survey was conducted through household visits with face-to-face interview in late The interviewees were selected carefully following the method of stratified random sampling (three-stage or fourth-stage depending on the country). Each country was classified into a few regions according to geographical situation, and several sampling units (districts, cities, states, provinces etc.) were chosen randomly. Then, within each sampling unit, a number of survey spots (sub-districts, wards, townships, villages etc.) were chosen using systematic sampling. The sample size is distributed in each of the stratum according to official population statistics. Since it was impossible to get the detailed list of residents, the survey depended on area sampling. Experienced market research companies were selected in each target country, and they sent skilled interviewers to each sampling unit. Interviewers visited household one by one and chose eligible households and interviewee(s) in the house who is appropriate in terms of the quota of gender, age group, and household income. The interviewers continued household visits until 1,000 completed and valid answers were collected in each country. As a result, the response rate of the survey differed largely from country to country. The detailed fieldwork description is available upon request. The questionnaire used in ASEAN Barometer 2009 is very comprehensive to incorporate 55 content questions and 10 demographic questions. 55 content questions include three sections, i.e., health module, environment module and value module. This study only focused on six content questions, - Q31, Q32, Q34, Q35-1, Q35-2 and Q39 in the original questionnaire -, which are mostly from the environment module of the questionnaire. The six content questions used in this study include one question about information access to envi- 156 THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

4 ronment-related knowledge, two questions about pro-environmental behaviors and three questions about environmental concerns. Regarding two questions about proenvironmental behaviors, one is defined as public-level environment behaviors which reflect the individuals' responsibility as citizens to voice their environmental concerns in public and take part in organized pro-environmental activities. It largely refers to the actions which do not bring any economic benefit to the people. Another one is defined as individual-level (private) environmental behaviors. It refers to the actions which are often aligned with direct economic benefits to the people. Regarding the three questions about environmental concerns, they are classified into concerns at the local level (pollution, waste disposal etc.), concerns at the global level (climate change, deletion of ozone layer etc.), and health risk concerns (local environmental issues-induced health problems) Characteristics of sample and Scale Construction To examine the relationships between social factors and pro-environmental behaviors, this study includes five demographics of respondents, i.e., gender, age, education level, income level and urban/rural division of residence (Table 1). The sample population comprises 48.2% male and 51.8% female. Their age ranges from 20 to 69 years old, with a mean of 39 years old (20-29 (27.5%), (26.5%), (21.6%), (15.6%), (8.8%)). Regarding the education level, three levels are classified as primary/lower secondary, upper secondary and higher. With a mean of 1.63 as the average educational level, 55.2% of the respondents completed primary/lower secondary education, 25.7% of the respondents completed upper secondary education, and only 18.8% of the respondents completed higher education. Regarding the income level, three levels (lower, middle, upper) are defined according to each country's stage of economic development. The exact amount in local currency and income range therefore differs from country to country. On the whole, lower income group accounts for 45.3% of the respondents, middle income group accounts for 35.3% of the respondents, and upper income group accounts for 15.1% of the respondents. Regarding the urban/ rural division of residence, 52.9% of the respondents live in urban area, while 47.1% of the respondents live in the rural area. To reflect the multiple perspectives of sophisticated concepts of environmental concerns and behaviors, we designed content questions containing multiple items (Table 2). To examine the reliability of self-reported response to these item questions, we calculate the Cronbach's Alpha. In general, the results ranged from to 0.929, indicating an acceptable consistency of answers to these item questions in measuring the corresponding environmental indicator (Table 2). By transforming categorical responses of these item questions into interval data, it is possible to apply statistical techniques such as analysis of variance (ANO- VA), correlation analysis, regression and path analysis to capture the relationships among environmental indices. The data transformation process for each environmental index is explained as follows (Table 1). 1. Information access (InfoAccess) This indicator measures the general accessibility of ASEAN residents to Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 157

5 Table 1 Summary of environmental behavior indices and factor variables Table 2 Reliability analysis of environmental indices Note: A value of is an acceptable value for Cronbach s ; values substantially lower indicate an unreliable scale. 158 THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

6 environment information and/or relevant health risks. It is formed by combining the answers for asking the respondents to subjectively identify their accessibility to the information sources of (a) TV or radio, (b) newspaper or magazines, (c) internet, (d) communitybased meetings. Four information sources were presented as questions which started with "how available to you is the information of health and/or environment through the following?" The InfoAccess scale is constructed by calculating mean of the scores for these four information sources. 2. Public pro-environmental behaviors (PubBehaviors) In this study, we divide pro-environment behaviors into two types. One is the indicator called PubBehaviors, which measures to what extent the ASEAN residents are participating in organized pro-environmental activities to voice their environmental concerns in public, and consequently leading to public policy advocacy. The construction of PubBehaviors scale is conducted by combining the answers for asking the respondents to subjectively identify whether they have done the following activities or not (a) to attend lectures or seminars about an environment issue, (b) to take part in volunteer activities for environment conservation, (c) to sign a petition about an environmental issue, (d) to give money to an environmental group, (e) to take part in a protest or demonstration about an environmental issue. To reflect to what extent each respondent takes part in public proenvironmental activities, PubBehaviors is developed by aggregating scores for the aforementioned five items. The result is a 6-point scale variable, ranging from 0 to Private pro-environmental behaviors (PrivBehaviors) Another indicator to measure pro-environmental behaviors at the individuallevel is called PrivBehaviors. It captures the spontaneous household activities to ameliorate environmental problems. These activities are often performed for economic reasons of the family, in other words, money-saving through consumption reduction. The indicator is conducted by combining the answers for asking the respondents to indicate how often they performed each of five private pro-environmental activities (a) to reuse or recycle something rather than throw it away, (b) to try to reduce water consumption, (c) to try to reduce the amount of energy for cooking, cooling and heating, (d) to use public transportation instead of using personal car, (e) to buy organic or chemical-free vegetables. Five private pro-environmental activities were presented as questions which started with "how often have you done any of the following actions during the last 12 months?" The mean of the rating scores for these five private proenvironmental activities is calculated as a rough measurement of individual behaviors. 4. Local environmental concerns (LocConcerns) Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 159

7 This study also identifies two types of environmental concerns. One is at the local level, LocConcerns, which measured the subjective evaluation of respondents on environmental changes of their places of residence. The construction of LocConcerns scale is conducted by combining the answers for asking respondents to indicate the level of their concerns about 16 environmental issues at the local level. It was presented as questions which started with "compared to five years ago, do you think that the following issues have become more serious now?" The 16 environmental issues at the local level ranged from living environmental problems to ecological problems (a) air pollution, (b) water pollution, (c) soil pollution, (d) noise pollution, (e) climate change, (f ) urban heat island, (g) pollution of beaches, river-side, lake-side etc., (h) deforestation, (i) genetically modified food issues, (j) water shortage, (k) using up our natural resources, (l) usage of chemicals and pesticides, (m) disposal of household waste and garbage, (n) disposal of industrial waste, (o) disposal of toxic or nuclear waste, (p) loss of biodiversity. The mean of the rating scores for these 16 environmental issues is calculated as a measurement of each respondent's overall environmental concerns at the local level. 5. Health-related concerns (HelConcerns) Environmental problems often cause health risks, for instance, serious air pollution may cause the high incidence of respiratory of diseases. This study measures the ASEAN residents' healthrelated concerns by constructing an indicator of HelConcerns. It combines the answers for asking respondents to indicate the level of their concerns about 16 health risks induced by the corresponding environmental issues of LocConcerns. The mean of the rating scores for these 16 health risks is calculated as a measurement of each respondent's health-related concerns. 6. Global environmental concerns (Glob- Concerns) Another type of environmental concerns is at the global level, i.e., the residents' awareness of environmental problems pertinent to the sustainability of human society and earth ecosystems. We construct the indicator, GlobConcerns, by combining the answers for asking respondents to indicate the level of their concerns about eight environmental issues at the global level (a) deletion of ozone layer, (b) acid rain, (c) climate change, (d) deforestation, (e) loss of biodiversity, (f ) marine pollution, (g) nuclear waste disposal, (h) usage of chemicals and pesticides. The mean of the rating scores for these eight environmental issues is calculated as a measurement of each respondent's global environmental concerns Hypotheses Based on the previous studies' empirical findings, this study assumes: 1. Social factors including a broad range of demographic characteristics are important determinants of pro-environmental 160 THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

8 behaviors and environmental concerns in the ASEAN countries; 2. Knowledge diffusion through formal and/or informal education activities, in this study, better access to information, improves people's awareness of environmental problems, as well as facilitates the participation of the ASEAN residents in pro-environmental behaviors; 3. Improved environmental concerns will lead to more active involvement in proenvironmental behavior. It is worthy to mention that, though no consistent results in explaining socio-economic determinants of environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviors, regarding the age, gender, education, income, and urban/rural division of residence, the previous studies about Western countries generally suggest that younger people, female, higher education, high income and urban residents tend to express greater environmental concerns and support for pro-environmental activities. III Results and discussions 3.1. Pro-environmental behaviors Comparing the frequency of public-level pro-environmental behaviors to individual-level (private) behaviors, it is clear that the vast majority of the respondents conducted individual-level behaviors to some extent in their daily life; however, there is only a minority of respondents involved in public-level pro-environmental activities in ASEAN countries (Table 3). More than half of the respondents reported that they have been performing individual-level environmental activities on a regular base (sometimes, often, or always). In contrast, 23.0% of the respondents have the experiences to attend lectures or seminars about an environmental issue, 20.5% of the respondents have taken part in volunteer activities for environment conservation, and 24.2% of the respondents have given money to an environmental group. Furthermore, a much smaller share of respondents has the experiences to sign a petition about an environmental issue (6.1%) and take part in a protest or demonstration of an environmental issue (3.4%). Overall, respondents reported performing individuallevel environmental activities which require the least organized efforts much more often than organized public activities. In addition, the respondents reported participating in organized environmental activities more frequently than voicing their environmental concerns in public. These facts may reflect the authoritarian feature of Asian society and lack of tradition to participate in public activities. Individual-level behaviors covered four domains of everyday behaviors including recycling/reusing, environmentally responsible consumption, transportation choices, and food consumption patterns. For all domains, over 70% of respondents reported performing environmental behaviors in their daily lives to some extent. Moreover, the respondents appear to engage in environmentally responsible consumption (saving water and energy) and transportation choices (public transportation use) more actively than recycling/reusing and food consumption patterns (purchase of organic and chemical-free vegetables). The respondents, therefore, are far more likely to engage in environmental activities that would bring a direct economic benefit to them. Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 161

9 Table 3 Public-level and individual-level pro-environmental behaviors 3.2. ANOVA and Correlation Analysis Table 4 summarizes the results of analysis of variance (ANOVA). The sociological attributes seem to be affecting environmental behaviors and concerns in ASEAN countries. Table 4 depicts that there is a significant difference between female and male in terms of access to environment-related information, public proenvironmental behaviors, private proenvironmental behaviors and local environmental concerns. Public pro-environmental behavior is also significantly different between respondents with different education level and living in urban/rural areas, but not different between respondents of different age and income level. In terms of access to information, private pro-environmental behaviors, local environmental concerns, health-related environmental concerns and global environmental concerns, there are significant differences between respondents with different age, education, income and place of residence. However, our survey could not reach consistent conclusion that younger people, female, higher educated, relatively high-income and urban residents are more likely to express their serious concerns about environmental problems and/or perform pro-environmental behaviors than the other cohorts. Correlation analysis in Table 5 shows that the relationships between sociological attributes and environmental variables depend on the variable choice. The slight positive effects, if any, are observed only in the case of education level. The educa- 162 THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

10 Table 4 Analysis of variance for gender, age, education level, income level, and residence (F-value) Note: * indicates a 5% significant level. ** indicates a 1% significant level. tion level of the respondents appears to be robustly correlated with all environmental variables. Table 5 also presents the correlations among environmental variables. It shows that local environmental concerns are significantly correlated with health-related environmental concerns (0.768). Considering the question design which asked the respondents to indicate the level of their health risk concerns related to local environmental problems, it is natural that two variables have a high correlation. Local environmental concerns and health concerns are also rather strongly correlated to global environmental concerns, and respectively. People who reported having environmental concerns at the local level are more likely to perceive the importance of environ- Table 5 Correlation among different variables Note: *indicates correlation is significant at 5% level. **indicates correlation is significant at 1% level. Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 163

11 mental problems at the global level. In addition, though weakly, information access is correlated to public pro-environmental behaviors (0.116) and individual-level proenvironmental behaviors (0.183) Path Analysis To trace the cause/effect relationships among various environmental variables, path analysis was conducted using the software Amos 19. The model was finalized in a two-step process. In the first step, the model was adjusted to find acceptable estimation results. In the subsequent step, all statistically insignificant paths were excluded and the model was re-estimated. Figure 1 depicts one of the acceptable models, wherein all the significant path coefficients at the 5% level were indicated. Estimated significant path coefficients derived from the various steps of multiple regressions of environmental variables. The direct effect of one variable on another is presented as the weight given by the path coefficient, while the indirect effect can be calculated by multiplying the relevant estimated coefficients of direct paths. The value of direct effect lies into the range between -1 to +1. It indicates the relative change in the dependent variable induced by one unit of change in the independent variable. Figure 1 indicates that our initial hypothesis of a causal effect from information access to environmental concerns and consequently to environmental behaviors was not confirmed in ASEAN countries. The chi-square is significant with 2 degrees of freedom. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) is The significant chi-square value and a RMSEA larger than 0.05 indicate that the overall goodness of fit of the model is low, however, the predicted paths still provide indicative information about cause/effect relationships among environmental variables. Figure 1 Path analysis: information access, environmental concerns, and pro-environmental behaviors. Chi-squre= , degree of freedom=2, p-value=0.000, RMSEA= THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

12 The predicted paths among information access, environmental concerns and environmental behaviors are significant, regardless the fact that the effects are negligible for both public-level and individual-level. In addition, the indirect effects of information access on environmental behaviors through environmental concerns are found to be negative ( and , respectively), while the direct effects of information access on environmental behaviors are found to be positive (0.128 and 0.181, respectively). The finding implies that the access to environment-related information and/or knowledge might effectively promote people's involvement in pro-environmental activities (at both public- and individual-level), but not necessarily improve people's awareness of environmental issues in ASEAN countries. In the meantime, compared to public environmental behaviors, we found more diversified significant paths from various environmental variables to private environmental behaviors. In particular, there is a significant path from public environmental behaviors to private environmental behaviors. These findings suggest that, first, improved information access and environmental awareness are more likely to lead to active participation in environmental activities at the individual level, but less in environmental activities at the public level. Second, improved environmental knowledge and awareness through organized public environmental activities might contribute to the more active involvement of in individual environmental behaviors. IV Conclusion This study investigated various factors, particularly, ordinary residents' accessibility to environment knowledge/information, affecting pro-environmental behaviors in the ASEAN member countries. It is worthy to mention that, educational intervention and providing information may come to affect environmental awareness and behaviors over a long time period. It is, thus, difficult to conclusively demonstrate the cause/effect relationship between them. However, the education intervention and providing information are important because they can exert indirect effects changing people's political behavior; this behavior, in turn, changes government policy. In this sense, the links among information, environmental attitudes and behaviors might be a key to finding the solution of environmental problems. The empirical results of this study lead to the following three main conclusions. First, through differentiating the pro-environmental behaviors between public-level one and individual-level one, we found that public proenvironmental behaviors, which largely involved organized activities, were overall less frequent than private pro-environmental behaviors. The ordinary residents in ASEAN countries are more likely to participate in the pro-environmental activities that have direct self-interest (cost-saving) for the people involved. For instance, energy-saving behaviors appear to be more popular than green consumption behaviors. This fact suggests the importance of introducing economic incentives when ASEAN countries' governments implement environmental policies. Appropri- Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 165

13 ate economic incentives might enhance people's willingness to be involved in environmental protection activities, especially organized public activities in ASEAN countries. Secondly, sociological attributes including gender, age, education, income and place of residence seem to influence the awareness and behavior patterns of respondents towards the environment in ASEAN countries. However, we could not identify the robust signs of correlations between those sociological attributes and environmental variables. Among five demographics examined in this study, education level is the only one which appeared to explain the differences of environmental variables consistently, though rather weak. Thirdly, the results of path analysis suggest the causal relationship from information access to pro-environmental behaviors, and the causal relationship from public-level pro-environmental behaviors to private-level proenvironmental behaviors. However, we did not identify significant effects from improved environmental concerns on pro-environment behaviors. These findings imply the importance of environmental knowledge diffusion in ASE- AN countries. The knowledge diffusion may not necessarily be realized through formal school education. Instead, we highlighted the importance of improved accessibility to environment information through both traditional media such as newspaper, television and new media such as internet. In ASEAN, at this moment, improved information access appears more likely to lead to active participation in environmental activities at the individual level, mostly household consumption behaviors, but less in organized environmental activities at the public level. In the future, more detailed country-wise study and regional comparison could be conducted to extend the findings of this study. Acknowledgement The dataset used in this study was collected through the survey, ASEAN Barometer. Professor Takashi Inoguchi is the project leader who initiated the survey. The author expresses her sincere gratitude to Prof. Inoguchi for his warm encouragement and support. The author also would like to thank Prof. Manabu Kondo for his generosity to share his research outcome and knowledge in the field of Environmental Economics during the past a few years. References Adeola, O. Francis Environmental Hazards, Health, and Racial Inequity in Hazardous Waste Distribution. Environment and Behavior, vol. 26(1), Aoyagi-Usui, Midori, Henk Vinken, and Atsuko Kuribayashi Pro-environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: An International Comparison. Research in Human Ecology, vol. 10(1), Arcury, A. Thomas, Eric H. Christianson Environmental Worldview in Response to Environmental Problems: Kentucky 1984 and 1988 Compared. Environment and Behavior, vol. 22(3), ASEAN Secretariat ASEAN Environmental Education Action Plan (AEEAP) : Environmental Education for Sustainable Development. Jakarta, Indonesia. Aytulkasapoglu, M., Mehmet C Ecevit Attitudes and Behavior Toward the Environment: the Case of Lake Burdur in Turkey. Environment and Behavior, vol. 34(3), Baldassare, Mark, Cheryl Katz The Personal Threat of Environmental Problems as Predictor of Environmental Practices. Environment and Behavior, vol. 24(5), Davidson, J. Debra, Wiluam R. Freudenburg Gender and Environmental Risk Concerns: A Review and Analysis of Available Research. Environment and Behavior, vol. 28(3), THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

14 Deng, Jinyang, Gordon J. Walker, Guy Swinnerton A Comparison of Environmental Values and Attitudes Between Chinese in Canada and Anglo-Canadians. Environment and Behavior, vol. 38(1), Dietz, Thomas, Linda Kalof, Paul C. Stern Gender, Values, and Environmentalism. Social Science Quarterly, vol. 83(1), Howell, E. Susan, Shirley B. Laska The Changing Face of the Environmental Coalition: A Research Note. Environment and Behavior, vol. 24(1), Hunter, M. Lori, Alison Hatch, and Aaron Johnson Cross-National Gender Variation in Environmental Behaviors. Social Science Quarterly, vol. 85(3), Lyons Evanthia, Glynis M. Breakwell Factors Predicting Environmental Concern and Indifference in 13- to 16-Year-Olds. Environment and Behavior, vol. 26(2), Stern, C. Paul Information, Incentives, and Proenvironmental Consumer Behavior. Journal of Consumer Policy, vol. 22(4), Stern, C. Paul Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior. Journal of Social Issues, vol. 56(3), Stern, C. Paul, Thomas Dietz The Value Basis of Environmental Concern. Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 50(3), Stern, C. Paul, Thomas Dietz, and Linda Kalof Value Orientations, Gender and Environmental Concern. Environment and Behavior, vol. 25(3), Stern, C. Paul, Thomas Dietz, Linda Kalof and Gregory A. Guagnano Values, Beliefs, and Proenvironmental Action: Attitude Formation toward Emergent Attitude Objects. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 25(18), Stern, C. Paul, Thomas Dietz, Troy Abel, Gregory A. Guagnano and Linda Kalof A Value-Belief-Norm Theory of Support for Social Movements: The Case of Environmentalism. Human Ecology Review, vol. 6(2), Zelezny, C. Lynnette, Poh-Pheng Chua, and Christina Aldrich Elaborating on Gender Differences in Environmentalism. Journal of Social Issues, vol. 56(3), Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 167

15 Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors A Nine-Country Survey in Southeast Asia Although the factors and their relationships with pro-environmental behaviors have received substantial attention in the literature, not much attention has been paid to the issue in the Asian context. This study applies survey data in nine Southeast Asian countries to examine the relationships among sociological attributes, diffusion of environment knowledge/information, environmental concerns, and pro-environmental behaviors. The study found that, first, ASEAN residents more likely participate in the private-level pro-environmental activities with economic incentives, i.e., saving the cost of living. Second, education level seems to be the only demographic characteristic which predicts environmental awareness and pro-environmental behaviors in ASEAN countries. Thirdly, improved accessibility to environment knowledge/information is expected to encourage pro-environmental behaviors in ASEAN countries, especially, changes in household consumption patterns. Keywords: cross-country survey, pro-environmental behaviors, ASEAN Barometer 168 THE HIKONE RONSO 2015 spring / No.403

16 Exploring Social Factors and Pro-environmental Behaviors 169