Environmental pessimism diminishes social trust and concern in predicting willingness to sacrifice for environmental protections
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13056585 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joshua Doyle (0000-0001-5131-6695, Purdue University West Lafayette, corresponding author), F Hao (0000-0002-0930-8461, University of South Florida) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 62-72 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2190-6491 • E-ISSN: 2190-6483 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s13412-025-01015-6 |
| OpenAlex | W4409695300 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
Addressing environmental problems depends on individual willingness to make sacrifices in coordination with others, making them social dilemmas. Therefore, individuals who believe these problems are important may become unwilling if they expect others will not reciprocate. Therefore, social trust—a belief that people in general will behave pro-socially—is a predictor of environmental willingness. Environmental pessimism—the belief that the resolution of these problems is hopeless—is a negative predictor of willingness. We hypothesize that because of the negativity bias, pessimism will attenuate the effect of both trust and environmental concern in predicting environmental willingness. We test our hypotheses using multi-level models on the ISSP’s Environment IV dataset. We find that while social trust and environmental concern are positively associated with willingness, environmental pessimism diminishes the positive effects of trust and concern. We find both that individuals who have high social trust and environmental concern become less willing to make sacrifices for the environment than those who are less pessimistic. These results suggest that overcoming environmental pessimism is key to increasing support for addressing environmental problems
Economics · Environmental ethics · Environmental resource management · Geography · Microeconomics · Natural resource economics · Pessimism · Political science · Sacrifice · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Willingness to pay · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Environmental Education and Sustainability · Law · Psychological and Temporal Perspectives Research · Psychology · Social Psychology · Ecology
Micromotives and macrobehavior
Feeling Climate Change
Climate Change and Society
Social Dilemmas
Climate Justice and Inequality
The Struggle to Govern the Commons
Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion
Governing the Commons
Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change
The Moral Foundations of Trust
Trust, Culture, and Cooperation
Interpersonal trust, trustworthiness, and gullibility
The Role of Cynicism in Social Responses to the Climate Emergency
Trust and environmental activism across regions and countries
Environmental attitudes and the politics of distrust
Social Capital, carbon dependency, and public response to climate change in 22 European countries
A social trap for the climate? Collective action, trust and climate change risk perception in 35 countries
Climate change, powerlessness and the commons dilemma
Environmental Trust
Dispositions to Act in Favor of the Environment
The Effect of Cultural Trust on Cooperation in Two Behavioral Experiments
Trust games
A Panel Regression Study on Multiple Predictors of Environmental Concern for 82 Countries Across Seven Years
Attention and weight in person perception
Acceptance of Higher Taxes for the Environment
Trust, Gullibility, and Social Intelligence
Trust in Social Dilemmas
How does Social Trust Shape the Politicization of America’s Climate Change Perception?—A Study of Two National Surveys in 2022 and 2023
Spheres of trust
Barriers perceived to engaging with climate change among the UK public and their policy implications
Bad is Stronger than Good
Fear Won't Do It
Self-rated health, generalized trust, and the Affordable Care Act
Trust, happiness and mortality
Social Dilemmas
Uncertainty, Trust, and Commitment Formation in the United States and Japan
Barriers to Environmental Sacrifice
Social trust, cultural trust, and the will to sacrifice for environmental protections
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |