Economy “Versus” Environment: The Influence of Economic Ideology and Political Identity on Perceived Threat of Eco-Catastrophe

Abstract

Using data from a national survey of American adults, we examine the relationships between economic, political, sociodemographic, and religious characteristics with perception of the potential for eco-catastrophe. We employ the treadmill of production theory to frame our understanding of views about ecological concerns, arguing that the treadmill discourse associated with economic development is hegemonic and fundamentally shapes public views of eco-catastrophe. In line with this approach, economic ideology is the strongest predictor of attitudes about eco-catastrophe, and its influence is conditioned by political identity. There is also significant patterning in these perceptions based on gender, race, education, and religion, but the influence of social characteristics is primarily indirect—mediated by economic ideology and political identity. These results provide useful information for addressing environmental problems in public discourse and bridging policy divides.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Support for the environment peaked in 1991 with 71 percent of respondents selecting environmental protection over economic development. In each year following the financial crisis of 2008, less than half of Americans have favored environmental protection over development, with 41 percent selecting this option in 2011.

² We define economic ideology as a belief system pertaining to issues such as the distribution of income and wealth, standards of living, and the role and regulation of business in society. Political ideologies are distinguished as beliefs about political parties and organizations, form and organization of government, and ideas about public policy, particularly on cultural issues (e.g., sexual politics). Here, we operationalize an index developed as a measure of economic ideology to distinguish it from the generalized political aspects noted above.

³ The mailings included a $5.00 reward for agreeing to complete the questionnaire and contained a number to call if respondents had any questions about the survey or the procedure. A second mailing thanked respondents who had completed questionnaire and asked for the cooperation of those who had not. Reminder postcards were also sent along with a second complete mailing to addresses where no one had responded.

⁴ To assess the representativeness of the sample, we compared frequency distributions from Wave II of the Baylor Religion Survey to demographic information from the Census Bureau (American Community Survey) for that year, as well as to the 2008 General Social Survey on political and religious items. Overall, the sample provides a reasonable estimate for population parameters for American adults. Tabled results available upon request.

⁵ The third item in our index is also clearly associated with a broader social ideology regarding ethnic and racial equality. We include it as a measure of economic ideology because it addresses economic outcomes related to standards of living and wealth distribution. That is, the question concerns views on economic policies that can address wealth and income inequality. Laissez-faire economic ideologies emphasizing the necessity and greater good of market forces will generally impugn and resist efforts to redistribute wealth.

⁶ To assess whether the indicators used for the eco-catastrophe and economic indices were distinct or represented a single underlying factor, all six indicators were included in factor analyses using both oblique and orthogonal rotation. In both cases, the analysis produced two distinct factors with Eigenvalues greater than 1.3. Similarly, we conducted factor analyses to determine if the indicators of economic ideology were distinct from the indicators of political identity. These results were less definitive, lending tentative support for either keeping the concepts distinct or combining them (the Eigenvalue of the second factor was 0.91). We keep economic ideology distinct from political identity for both theoretical (see note 1) and empirical reasons. Empirically, we are interested in examining the unique effect of economic ideology on views of the environment. To bring attention to the critical role played by economic views on environmental attitudes among the public, it is necessary to keep the measures separate and control for political identity, which already has an extensive literature documenting its impact.

⁷ We also tested a model accounting for religious tradition (Steensland et al. 2000) using evangelical (conservative) Protestants as the reference category. After controlling for religious practice and biblical literalism, “mainline” (more theologically liberal) Protestants still perceived significantly more potential threat from eco-catastrophe than did evangelicals (β = 0.061, p ≤ 0.05). However, most of the variation between these groups is explained by literalism. The correlation between a binary variable for the two groups (evangelical versus mainline) and the literalism measure is 0.321 (p ≤ 0.01), as only 11 percent of mainliners are literalists compared to 45 percent of evangelicals (see also Eckberg and Blocker 1996). Consequently, the R-squared value of the model was not improved by including controls for religious tradition. Tabled results are available upon request. Literalism is low among mainliners because of a primary split between mainline and evangelical Protestantism throughout the 20th century, which involved differing hermeneutic approaches to religious scripture.

⁸ The interaction between economic views and political identity is also present in bivariate contexts. Among conservatives (respondents with scores from 2 to 5 on the political identity measure), the correlation between economic ideology and perceived threat of eco-catastrophe was 0.56, while it was 0.37 for moderates (6 to 10 on political identity), and 0.17 for liberals (11 to 14 on political identity). We also conducted supplemental regression models predicting each of the indicators in the eco-catastrophe index separately. The interaction between economic ideology and political identity was significant and in the same direction for each of the three indicators. The smallest interaction effect occurred for the question about the reduction of biodiversity, while the largest interaction was found for views of climate change. These results show that climate change per se is a more strongly politicized public issue than an aspect of its cause (use of fossil fuels) and one of its potential consequences (decreased biodiversity).