98
and recommends community building within local context and place-based
education as a means towards cultivating Environmental Citizenship (Lubell 2002;
Sverker and Matti 2010).
This means that the individual-level analysis of Environmental Citizenship has to
be complemented by a more context-related view on the concept. In the following,
we will define our key concept (environmental attitudes (EA)), analyse the relationship of environmental attitudes and values, present empirical research on environmental attitudes with special focus on measurement methods and finally summarise
on how attitudes can develop.
7.2 Environmental Attitudes
A first definition of the concept of attitude was proposed by Allport in 1935 in the
Handbook of Social Psychology (Murchinson 1935: 798–844). In his opinion, attitudes represent ‘the predispositions learned to react with consistency to an object or
class of objects in a favourable or unfavourable manner’. From this unanimously
accepted definition, it is important to emphasise that attitudes are not instinctive but
learned. Also, attitudes are predispositions for manifestations of a certain behaviour,
and the answers are oriented positively or negatively and are also lasting or (according to newer research as) at least stable (van Harreveld and van der Pligt 2004;
Betsch 2011). A general and common definition of attitude is from Breckler (1984).
According to him, an attitude is a latent mental construct towards an abstract or
concrete object and has three components: (1) the affective component indicating a
person’s feelings about the attitude object; (2) the behavioural or conative component describing the way the attitude influences a person’s behaviour; and (3) the
cognitive component, a person’s belief/knowledge about an attitude object. Although
some attitudes may arise partly from genetic sources, most attitudes are primarily
learned (Baron and Byrne 1994), and attitudes formed through direct experiences
are stronger than those formed from listening to or observing others (Fazio
et al. 1982).
Other characteristics of attitudes that have been discussed in literature are the
intensity (Eagly and Chaiken 1993), the centrality of the attitudes, the degree of differentiation (also called strength of the attitude) and the specificity of the attitudes.
• Intensity is the power of the affective component. The more an attitude approaches
one of the extreme poles of a ‘favourable–unfavourable’ or ‘positive–negative’
bipolar scale, the greater its intensity.
• Centrality refers to the position of an attitude in the whole of the elements that
characterise an individual: social belonging, values, aptitudes, etc.
• The degree of differentiation of beliefs is the number of beliefs that are present
in the attitude. The lower the number of convictions, the more attitudes can be
changed.
N. Bauer et al.
and recommends community building within local context and place-based
education as a means towards cultivating Environmental Citizenship (Lubell 2002;
Sverker and Matti 2010).
This means that the individual-level analysis of Environmental Citizenship has to
be complemented by a more context-related view on the concept. In the following,
we will define our key concept (environmental attitudes (EA)), analyse the relationship of environmental attitudes and values, present empirical research on environmental attitudes with special focus on measurement methods and finally summarise
on how attitudes can develop.
7.2 Environmental Attitudes
A first definition of the concept of attitude was proposed by Allport in 1935 in the
Handbook of Social Psychology (Murchinson 1935: 798–844). In his opinion, attitudes represent ‘the predispositions learned to react with consistency to an object or
class of objects in a favourable or unfavourable manner’. From this unanimously
accepted definition, it is important to emphasise that attitudes are not instinctive but
learned. Also, attitudes are predispositions for manifestations of a certain behaviour,
and the answers are oriented positively or negatively and are also lasting or (according to newer research as) at least stable (van Harreveld and van der Pligt 2004;
Betsch 2011). A general and common definition of attitude is from Breckler (1984).
According to him, an attitude is a latent mental construct towards an abstract or
concrete object and has three components: (1) the affective component indicating a
person’s feelings about the attitude object; (2) the behavioural or conative component describing the way the attitude influences a person’s behaviour; and (3) the
cognitive component, a person’s belief/knowledge about an attitude object. Although
some attitudes may arise partly from genetic sources, most attitudes are primarily
learned (Baron and Byrne 1994), and attitudes formed through direct experiences
are stronger than those formed from listening to or observing others (Fazio
et al. 1982).
Other characteristics of attitudes that have been discussed in literature are the
intensity (Eagly and Chaiken 1993), the centrality of the attitudes, the degree of differentiation (also called strength of the attitude) and the specificity of the attitudes.
• Intensity is the power of the affective component. The more an attitude approaches
one of the extreme poles of a ‘favourable–unfavourable’ or ‘positive–negative’
bipolar scale, the greater its intensity.
• Centrality refers to the position of an attitude in the whole of the elements that
characterise an individual: social belonging, values, aptitudes, etc.
• The degree of differentiation of beliefs is the number of beliefs that are present
in the attitude. The lower the number of convictions, the more attitudes can be
changed.
N. Bauer et al.