Fourteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Understanding our ecological crisis is an urgent concern for scientific research, and this study aims to contribute to our knowledge of individuals’ environmental concerns. It is widely observed that religion, among other political, economic, socio-cultural systems, can shape the fundamental nature of individuals’ beliefs, values, and ideological worldviews. Indeed, religious and spiritual expressions contain substantial ethical, behavioral, and attitudinal components that may affect socially, politically, and economically relevant attitudes and behaviors. The present study examines the relationship between religiosity and environmental concerns broadly. Additionally, we examine the relationship between particular religious typologies and relevant variables of environmental beliefs, ideals, and responses. The aim is to examine how religion broadly relates to environmental concerns and which components of religiosity express positive and negative associations with environmentalism. Statistical modeling was used to determine the influencing factors of environmental attitudes from a recent and nationally representative dataset (N = 8280) to identify associations between religiosity and environmental concern. Results indicate that the relationship between religiosity and pro-environmentalism is mixed, while notable findings emerged concerning materialism; these results are discussed of their implications.