Environmental values and environmental concern

Abstract

Attitudes, values and concerns are frequently measured to monitor individual preferences of adolescents. As there is still some discussion about how to monitor those variables with respect to empirical instruments, directions of items or length of instruments, we applied two established scales (2 Major Environmental Value Model [2-MEV] and Environmental Motives Scale [EMS]) to a Slovenian sample of 804 middle and high school students. Subsequently, we confirmed the validity and reliability of both scales as well as their applicability to Slovene subjects, aged 12–18years. The main objective of our study was to explore the relationship between three factors of environmental concern (EMS) and the two higher-order factors of utilisation of nature and preservation of nature (2-MEV). The results show that altruistic (ALT), biospheric (BIO) and egoistic (EGO) environmental concerns correlate strongly positively with preservation of nature, but negatively and less strongly but still significantly with utilization of nature. We conclude that raising awareness of EGO environmental concern may be as important as ALT and/or BIO concern for understanding the environmental values and attitudes of an individual. Consequences and recommendations for designing and completing educational programmes are discussed.