Pushing a Green Agenda: Explaining Shifting Public Support for Environmental Spending

• Date: 01 June 2020
• Author: Juliet E. Carlisle,April K. Clark
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912918817193
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918817193

Political Research Quarterly

2020, Vol. 73(2) 243 –260

© 2019 University of Utah

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1065912918817193

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Article

Introduction

There is widespread evidence that Americans’ beliefs

about environmentalism have undergone dramatic

changes in recent decades. In fact, national public opin-

ion surveys show that since the mid-1960s, public con-

cern about the environment quickly became widespread

only to decline in the following decade after the inaugural

Earth Day in 1970. Although environmental attitudes

dropped in the late 1970s, in recent years the public’s

concern for the environment rebounded (Daniels et al.

2012) but waned markedly since 2008, with only a recent

uptick (Gallup 2013, 2014; Scruggs and Benegal 2012).

These large-scale opinion shifts have led to a search for

explanations of Americans’ changing attitudes toward the

environment.

Although social surveys demonstrate that the American

public’s concern for the environment fluctuates consider-

ably over time, disagreements exist as to the specific

source of change. Scholars who study changing public

opinion trends have used the concepts of cohort and

period to understand the extent to which aggregate-level

attitudinal change stems from the replacement of indi-

viduals as opposed to individuals changing their opinions

over time (Alwin and Krosnick 1991; Inglehart 1990;

Jennings and Niemi 1981). The distinction between the

two effects reflects causal arguments related to social

change. To what extent are variations in opinion trends

due to changes in the American public’s viewpoints, or to

younger generations interpreting the world differently

than preceding generations?

Although much research examines opinion change

over time, few consider the possibility of both period and

cohort changes by simultaneously modeling age,1 period,

and cohort (APC) effects. Dramatic changes may occur

as a result of either period or cohort (or both) and the

817193PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918817193Political Research QuarterlyClark and Carlisle

research-article2019

1Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, USA

2University of Utah, Utah, USA

Corresponding Author:

April K. Clark, Northern Illinois University, Department of Political

Science, 415 Zulauf Hall, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA.

Email: aclark9@niu.edu

Pushing a Green Agenda: Explaining

Shifting Public Support for

Environmental Spending

April K. Clark1 and Juliet E. Carlisle2

Abstract

Although mass opinion on many political issues is generally stable, Americans’ beliefs about environmentalism have

undergone dramatic changes in recent decades. Many studies of attitudinal change identify cohort- or period-based

effects as contributing to large-scale opinion changes. However, limited research exists that considers both explanations

simultaneously. This study estimates variability in environmental spending support across cohort and periods while also

testing the role of compositional and contextual causes of this variability. Our findings contribute to understanding

mass opinion change, as well as variations in the American public’s concern about the environment. Furthermore,

the modeling approach addresses the question of which macro- and micro-level characteristics are influential for

pushing forward a green agenda. The evidence presented casts doubt on studies that see pro-environmentalism as

dependent on personal or national wealth as well as findings that view shifts in concern as stemming from generational

replacement. Yet, among the major explanations identified in public opinion research, we find support for elite cues

and, to a lesser degree, subjective economic security as important factors that drive shifts in public concern about the

environment. Given these results, we argue that theories of postmaterialist environmentalism and theories of global

environmentalism are incomplete on their own.

Keywords

opinion change, environmentalism, period, generational, trends

244 Political Research Quarterly 73(2)

specific source of change can have important—albeit dif-

ferent and possibly negative—consequences on society.

Uncovering the specific source of environmental trends

provides a guide for understanding large-scale changes in

public preferences, as well as the potential to reduce or

even reverse the decline in environmental concern begun

in 2008. The theoretical expectation is that the spread of

postmaterialism values and thus, the American public’s

concern about the environment, occurs as a gradual pro-

cess resulting from cohort replacement or as a major shift

due to individual attitude change reflecting the impact of

events and movements in the external world (i.e., time

period effects). Generational effects, unlike period

effects, imply that America’s waning support for environ-

mental protection will not easily recover.

Our analysis uses a new method of estimation to gauge

the degree of variability in environmental concern across

cohort and periods while also testing the role of composi-

tional and contextual causes of this variability. Until the

association between key individual-level predictors and

macro-level change is jointly assessed, it is impossible to

quantify the influence of historical happenings (i.e.,

period effects), the formative experiences of birth cohorts

(i.e., unique socialization experiences), or social and

demographic differences (i.e., compositional changes)

across cohorts. Thus, despite the quality of prior studies,

the results are restricted to describing how environmental

attitudes develop and change but they are not able to

explain why individuals may be more environmentally

concerned as compared with similarly situated individu-

als in the previous or later generation. In short, this analy-

sis addresses the theoretical expectations regarding the

sources of large-scale changes in environmental opinion

in the United States that previous research has been

largely unable to empirically verify.

Theoretical Framework

Previous studies contend that long-term changes in

environmental concern result from the replacement of

older generations of Americans with significantly dif-

ferent environmental attitudes (reflecting cohort-based

changes) or because environmental viewpoints change

among the population as a whole (reflecting a period-

based effect). A related consideration is the predictive

value of individual- and national-level variables in

explaining period- and/or cohort-based changes in envi-

ronmental concern.

More specific to the theoretical elaboration about the

relationship between macro- and micro-foundations of

environmental concern, many previous studies rely on

the possible impact of modernization and national wealth

on pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. Arguments

abound about how value changes associated with

economic development and socioeconomic security

encouraged concern for the environment in the United

States. In particular, according to the postmaterialist

hypothesis (Inglehart 1977), the emergence of wide-

spread environmental concern coincides with economic

security (Scruggs and Benegal 2012). In this way, the

economic prosperity experienced post-World War II cre-

ated a major cultural shift in American society from a

concern for material needs—that is, economic and physi-

cal safety—to postmaterialists values of self-expression,

personal identity, and quality of life (Inglehart 1995). The

culmination of the change from materialist to postmateri-

alist values gave rise to the support of environmentalism,

feminism, and equality (Inglehart 1995).

At the same time, recent studies have built upon

Inglehart’s postmaterialist hypothesis—in what they term

the affluence or prosperity hypothesis—for the positive

relationship between wealth (using various measures of

socioeconomic status [SES], predominantly education,2

and income) and environmental concern (Diekmann and

Franzen 1999; Franzen and Meyer 2010; Gelissen 2007;

Marquart-Pyatt 2008). Although it predicts a similar posi-

tive relationship between SES and environmental con-

cern, the affluence hypothesis considers environmental

quality as an amenity good with well-off individuals

more readily able to afford to pay the cost of pollution

reduction and adopting a more green lifestyle (Franzen

and Meyer 2010; Meyer and Liebe 2010). According to

this view, the demand for environmental quality is inde-

pendent of socialization processes or the adoption of

postmaterialist values. Rather, demand is a function of

“unequal constraints” (i.e., income or wealth), and

emerges with the ability to afford pro-environmental atti-

tudes and behavior (Meyer and Liebe 2010).

What is more, scholars differ as to the correct level of

analysis used to estimate economic security—as a relation-

ship of personal wealth or national wealth—to test the

theory of postmaterialism and value change (see Nawrotzki

and Pampel 2013; Pampel and Hunter, 2012; Pisano and

Lubell 2015). Moreover, while empirical studies suggest

an association between wealth and environmental concern

at the country-level and/or individual-level, there also

exists disagreement as to the nature of the relationship

(Diekmann and Franzen 1999; Franzen 2003; Franzen and

Meyer 2010; Kemmelmeier, Król, and Kim 2002; Kidd

and Lee 1997). One side argues that affluence at the indi-

vidual or national-level contributes to postmaterialist val-

ues and as such are the most environmentally concerned.

By contrast, others argue that less affluent individuals and

countries develop environmental concern as a response to

environmental inequalities that threaten their health and

well-being, and not out of support for postmaterialist val-

ues (Brechin 1999; Brechin and Kempton 1994, 1997;

Dunlap, Gallup, and Gallup 1992; Dunlap and York 2008).