International Journal of Sociology, vol. 38, no. 3, Fall 2008, pp. 108–125.

© 2008 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.

ISSN 0020–7659/2008 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/IJS0020-7659380305

Alicia A. Weaver

Does Protest Behavior Mediate

the Effects of Public Opinion on
National Environmental Policies?
A Simple Question and a Complex Answer

ABSTRACT: This article investigates the complex process by which nations are
accountable to their publics by evaluating the extent to which the relationship be-
tween public opinion and national environmental policies operates through protest
behavior. Using data from cross-national public opinion polls, this research examines
correlations between established indicators of public opinion on the environment and
three measures of environmental policy: the absence of energy subsidies, funding for
environmental projects, and environmental governance. Path analysis models test
whether the relationships between opinion and policy are direct or may be mediated
by social movement factors, in particular environmental protest behavior. Results
indicate that measures of public opinion diverge in terms of how they are related
to particular indicators of policy, and suggest that public opinion has both a direct
effect on policy and an indirect effect through protest behavior. The nature of the
relationships between public opinion, protest behavior, and environmental policy is
discussed and future directions for research in this area are proposed.

With their “international dimension” (Baumgartl 1997), environmental issues are a

testament to the increasing globalization of politics. However, sociologists have yet

Alicia A. Weaver is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Political Science,

Economics, and Sociology at Birmingham-Southern College. Her research interests include
environmental attitudes and behaviors, comparative social change, sustainable development, and
survey research methodology. The author thanks Kazimierz M. Slomczynski, J. Craig Jenkins,
and Katherine Meyer for comments and suggestions on previous versions of this article. Direct
all correspondence to Alicia Weaver, Department of Sociology, Birmingham-Southern College,
900 Arkadelphia Road, Birmingham, AL 35254; e-mail: aweaver@bsc.edu.

108
 FALL 2008  109

to determine whether there is a relationship between a surge in ecologically friendly

values at the national level and environmentally protective politics on a global
scale. This issue is of particular importance as research has provided evidence for
environmental policy affecting environmental quality; successful policy has been
found to reduce waste and emissions while policy failures have led to detrimental
effects on the environment (Gupta, Miranda, and Parry 1995; Min 2003).
Although there is not consensus in the sociological literature regarding the human
causes of environmental problems, theoretical explanations have predominantly
centered on cultural values (e.g., the dominant Western worldview; see Catton and
Dunlap 1980), decision making by corporate elites, and/or the pursuit of profit,
growth, and economic expansion inherent in the capitalist economic system (see
Foster 1999; Humphrey, Lewis, and Buttel 2003; Schnaiberg and Gould 1994).
Solutions to environmental problems, then, fall along these lines: widespread value
change, regulatory changes at the institutional level, a more equitable distribu-
tion of societal and environmental resources. Whichever approach is advocated,
changes in environmental policy are no doubt the intended result. And public
opinion either takes center stage (in the case of value change approaches) or is at
least tangentially related to this result (in the case of public opinion influencing elite
managerial behavior). When we look to collective action as a major way to bring
about environmental change, the role of public opinion in the policy-formation
process once again is paramount, as there is interplay between public opinion,
social movement behavior, and elite actions—all of these factors playing a role in
the development of policy.
The environmental policy domain is operating at a deficit when it comes to
research that considers the opinion–policy link at the cross-national level. The
comparative nature of this study contributes to the larger literature on public opin-
ion and policy, in which cross-national work has been lacking. Using data from
representative national public opinion polls, the relationship between opinion,
environmental protest behavior, and national environmental policy is examined in
order to extend previous research and address some of its shortcomings.

Theoretical Background and Research Hypotheses

Environmentalism: Public Opinion and Behavior

In the literature on environmentalism, public opinion often takes the form of

“environmental concern.” Such concern is typically characterized as specific at-
titudes and values toward environmental issues (e.g., attitudes about the risks of
environmental pollution or measures of how much people value environmental
protection) or behavioral intentions (such as willingness to pay more taxes for the
sake of the environment). Environmental concern is also frequently conceptualized
as generalized beliefs or worldview, such as awareness of the consequence of one’s
actions toward the environment (Schwartz 1968), social-altruistic, biospheric, and
110  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

egoistic value orientations (Stern, Dietz, and Kalof 1993), and adherence to a set
of general beliefs about the balance between humanity and nature (Dunlap and
Van Liere 1978).
Investigations of public opinion on the environment can be characterized along
two major veins. The first has predominantly focused on the sociodemographic
and social-psychological correlates of environmental concern. At the individual
level, certain demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education, income,
political ideology, knowledge, and religion have been found to affect levels of en-
vironmental concern (Blocker and Eckberg 1989; Jones and Dunlap 1992; Seguin,
Pelletier, and Hunsley 1998; Van Liere and Dunlap 1980). Structural characteristics
such as country affluence and postmaterialist values have also been shown to have
an impact on environmental attitudes such as willingness to pay for environmental
protection and attitudes toward government spending on the environment (Dekker,
Ester, and Nas 1997; Dunlap and Mertig 1995; Inglehart 1990, 1995).
The second vein of research explores the link between environmental attitudes
and behaviors. Although scholars have provided evidence that proenvironmental
attitudes impact environmental action at both individual and aggregate levels,
many studies have found this relationship to be relatively weak or have found
mixed results. Sequin, Pelletier, and Hunsley (1998) hold that attitudinal variables
become the most predictive of behavioral variables when the behavior is “moder-
ately difficult,” and that behavior that is “too easy” or “too difficult” may actually
weaken the attitude–behavior correlation (see also Stern, Dietz, and Guagnano
1995). Within this group of research, little attention has been afforded to the ef-
fect of environmental attitudes on mass behaviors, such as country-level policies.
However, this issue would seem particularly pertinent in light of the tendency to
place environmental concerns within the larger framework of new social move-
ments and/or new politics theories, as interest in these theories is grounded in “their
potential impact on mass electoral behavior and ultimately on political systems at
large” (Bean and Kelley 1995: 339).
Social movement behavior can inform the discussion of the opinion–policy
relationship. If “public opinion” can be likened to interest groups, then theories
about how interest groups influence societal change are relevant to an understanding
of how opinion might impact policy. Moreover, we cannot examine the opinion–
policy link without including social movement behavior in the model—in the form
of monetary contributions to environmental causes, participation in environmental
protests, and the like—as these activities are linked to environmental attitudes and
also impact them (Dunlap 1997).

Relationship of Public Opinion and Behavior with National

Environmental Policies

There has been considerable research on the determinants of public policy, and
while much of the work characterizes public opinion as a theoretical correlate of
 FALL 2008  111

policy, researchers do not often include measures of public opinion in their mod-
els. In those studies that do include public opinion measures, there appears to be
conclusive evidence that public opinion does in fact have a significant impact on
policy, but there is variation in whether the effect is direct or indirect and many
sociological aspects of this relationship have not been examined (see Burstein
[1998] and Burstein and Linton [2002] for a thorough examination of the literature).
These realities are mirrored in examinations of the environmental policy process.
For example, Wright, Erikson, and McIver (1987) find a strong direct effect of state
public opinion on state policy liberalism, while Regens and Elliott (1992) do not
find evidence of a direct effect of public opinion on policy in their investigation
of the determinants of regulatory costs associated with environmental protection.
I would argue that such discrepancies could likely be attributed to differences in
the way that both public opinion and policy are measured.
Studies that investigate the correlates of commitment to the environment in
the form of public policy are both conceptually and methodologically limited in
a number of ways. First, while case study evidence is prevalent, cross-national,
comparative approaches are lacking. Most studies do not employ cross-national
data sets and are not conducted with countries as the units of analysis; in fact,
much of this literature is focused on state-level environmental policy in the United
States (see, e.g., Lester et al. 1983; Ringquist 1993). Second, measures of both
environmental policy and its correlates have been narrow in scope (Hays, Esler,
and Hays 1996). For instance, most studies of environmental policy in the United
States focus on specific policy outcomes rather than on environmental policy in
general, thereby overlooking the broad spectrum of environmental protection poli-
cies (see Calvert 1979, for example). Moreover, the scope of explanatory variables
is restricted. Third, and perhaps most important within the context of this study,
this body of work is largely characterized by research that simply does not take
public opinion into account.
The few studies that have explicitly examined the relationship between public
opinion and environmental policy have come up short in terms of their concep-
tualization of public opinion. In accounting for variation in state commitment to
environmental policies, Hays, Esler, and Hays (1996) draw from six approaches
that have been prevalent in prior investigations. Moreover, they measure envi-
ronmental policy according to the Green Policy Index, which is a composite
score for sixty-seven policy initiatives (Hall and Kerr 1991; cf. Hays, Esler, and
Hays 1996), and the “most recently developed and broadest measure of state
environmental policy commitment” (Hays, Esler, and Hays 1996: 44). Thus,
their study could be considered one of the more comprehensive examinations
of environmental policy as an outcome. Yet, their measure of public opinion—
“opinion liberalism,” a measure of liberal and conservative self-identification
(first developed by Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993)—does not incorporate
any indicators of environmental concern. Although political liberalism has been
shown to be a determinant of proenvironmental attitudes and actions (Weaver
112  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

2002), some scholars have asserted that environmentalism captures a new ideology
that is “orthogonal to traditional liberal-conservativism” (McCright and Dunlap
2003: 353; Paehlke 1989; cf. McCright and Dunlap 2003). So while liberalism is
certainly a correlate of environmental attitudes, it operates in a manner autonomous
from such attitudes, and should therefore not be put forth as a measure of public
concern for the environment.
Brace and colleagues (2002) examine the relationship between specific state-
level public opinion measures (on diverse issues such as tolerance, racial integration,
abortion, feminism, and environmentalism) and specific state policies in the United
States. They generally find their opinion measures to be significantly correlated
with policy indicators.
Among the studies that address the public opinion/environmental policy rela-
tionship, there appears to be a consensus that public opinion does affect policy,
but it is not clear whether there is a direct effect of opinion on policy or whether
opinion operates through other factors. In the case of opinion liberalism, Hays,
Esler, and Hays (1996) find that although opinion does not directly impact state
environmental commitment it does have a positive effect on both the strength of
environmental membership and elite party liberalism, both of which directly affect
state environmental policy commitment. Studies such as those conducted by Hays,
Esler, and Hays (1996) and Brace and colleagues (2002), while certainly important
to the goal of elaborating approaches to examining potential linkages between public
opinion and environmental policy, point to the need to address public opinion as
more than a measure of liberalism or as a one-dimensional attitude. Rucht’s (1999)
work does tackle the environmental opinion–policy link at the cross-national level,
suggesting that countries that display strong environmental attitudes are more likely
to have national policies that are proenvironmental.

Research Hypotheses

In the current study I undertake a cross-national, comparative investigation of the

relationship between public opinion on the environment and environmental poli-
cies over time using data from representative national public opinion polls. My
core analyses center on two research questions: first, predicting that public opinion
has a direct impact on policy, and second, predicting that public opinion operates
indirectly through such mediating variable as environmental protest behavior. My
testable hypotheses are as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Public opinion toward the environment has a direct effect

on environmental policy, controlling for macrostructural factors such as prior
environmental policy.
Hypothesis 2: Public opinion has not only a direct effect but also an indirect
effect on environmental policy, operating through environmental movement
behavior.
 FALL 2008  113

Data and Measurement

Environmental Policy

In order for environmental policy to be comparable across nations, it must be con-

ceptualized as multidimensional and in fairly broad terms. An ideal measure would
be something like the Green Policy Index at the country level. Such a measure does
not exist, and therefore researchers are left to make do with the best measures that
span a substantial number of countries. Three measures of environmental policy
are considered in this research, all of which come from the 2005 Environmental
Sustainability Index (Esty et al. 2005): less energy subsidies, environmental proj-
ects, and environmental governance. Such a conceptualization of environmental
policy incorporates government commitment to the environment on an international
scale (in the case of environmental projects) and national regulatory policies that
are environment-minded (in the case of less energy subsidies and environmental
governance). Thus, environmental policy reflects national and international poli-
cies that reveal a governmental dedication to the environment and responsiveness
to environmental problems.
Less energy subsidies is a measure of whether or not a nation’s government
subsidizes energy and materials; subsidization indicates policies that encourage
wasteful consumption practices. It is a survey question from the World Economic
Forum Survey on subsidies, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree that no government
subsidies for energy or materials usage are present) to 7 (strongly agree). Therefore,
higher values of this variable represent less wasteful energy policies.
Environmental projects is a measure of a nation’s contributions to international and
bilateral funding of environment and development assistance programs, either as a do-
nor or recipient; aid data are taken from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The scale ranges
from 0 (low levels of aid) to 100 (high levels of aid), with higher levels corresponding
to higher levels of government commitment to environmental sustainability.
Environmental governance is a principal component of several World Eco-
nomic Forum survey questions on the following topics: air pollution and chemical
waste regulations; clarity, stability, and flexibility of regulations; environmental
regulatory innovation; leadership in environmental policy; consistency of regula-
tion enforcement; stringency of environmental regulations; toxic waste disposal
regulations; and water pollution regulations. Higher values indicate more effective
environmental governance.

Public Opinion on the Environment

My hypotheses require information on people’s attitudes toward the environment.

Usually such information is obtained on the basis of surveys. In the environment
domain, there are two main cross-national surveys that have been repeated at
114  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

multiple time points across many countries: the World Values Survey (WVS) and
the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Among these surveys, the ISSP
contains the most substantial battery of environment-oriented questions. The WVS
includes only a small number of such questions, although it has been repeated more
times and has been conducted on a larger sample that includes more country-level
variation in terms of level of development.
The goal of this research is to explore the data that do exist in order to discover
relationships. In this way, the models could be said to be “data-driven;” the re-
lationships presented here are representative of the “best case” available. This is
one limitation of addressing the opinion–policy relationship at the country level,
given poor data availability.1
To construct my measures of public opinion on the environment, I use data from
the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 1993 Environment I and ISSP 2000
Environment II), World Values Survey (1990 and 1999–2001 waves), and the Health
of the Planet Survey (Dunlap, Gallup, and Gallup 1993), for selected countries.2
The indicators of public opinion on the environment considered in this research
fall into the broad category of “willingness to sacrifice” measures, often referred
to as “behavioral intentions.” In a study of U.S. environmental attitudes, Guber
examines this battery of questions from the General Social Survey. She contends
that although
Americans are genuinely concerned about the environment, and most appear to
willing to accept some form of government regulation and intervention in busi-
ness and private decisions to aid in its protection . . . when confronted directly
with the cost of protecting the environment—either through higher prices, in-
creased taxes, or a reduction in the standard of living—respondents are plainly
divided . . . the issue of taxation is perhaps the most telling. A majority of those
polled thought that “too little” was being spent by the government to protect the
environment (61 percent), and yet only a third were willing to pay “much higher
taxes” to fund those efforts. (Guber 2003: 23–24)
Thus, these measures were selected because they require respondents to consider
the economic and lifestyle costs of environmental protection, something that more
general questions related to environmental attitudes do not do. Presumably, they
get at “true believers”—those who are willing to make a personal sacrifice for the
sake of their beliefs.3
There are three indicators of willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the environ-
ment: willingness to pay higher prices, willingness to pay higher taxes, and willing-
ness to accept cuts in standard of living. In the case of willingness to pay higher
prices (1990–93) and willingness to pay higher taxes (1999–2001), I combined
data from two surveys in order to increase the sample size as well as to include
greater variation among countries in terms of level of development. All measures
of public opinion are measured at the country level. Individual-level survey data
were aggregated.
 FALL 2008  115

Willingness to pay higher prices is measured as the proportion either willing

or very willing to pay higher prices for the environment. The 1990–93 variable
combines survey questions from two data sources: the 1992 Health of the Planet
(HOP) Survey and the 1993 International Social Survey Program. Question word-
ing is similar across surveys, allowing for the creation of a dichotomous variable,
with willing or very willing = 1, otherwise 0.
To create the combined measure, the ISSP 1993 price variable was regressed
on the HOP 1992 price variable for all overlapping countries. I then computed
predicted values for countries not overlapping, that is, included in the 1992 data
but not included in the 1993 data. A new 1993 price variable was then created by
adding the original ISSP 1993 price variable to the variable containing the predicted
values, and summing with the HOP 1992 variable. This yielded a sample of thirty-
four countries, in comparison with a sample of twenty-four countries in the HOP
1992 and twenty-one countries in the ISSP 1993.
The 1999–2001 willingness to pay higher taxes variable combines survey ques-
tions from two data sources: the 1999–2001 World Values Survey and the 2000
International Social Survey Program. In the WVS, respondents were asked whether
they would “agree to an increase in taxes if the extra money were used to prevent
environmental pollution.” Response options ranged from 1 = strongly disagree
to 4 = strongly agree (reverse coded so that higher values reflect higher levels of
concern for the environment). In the ISSP, respondents were asked how willing they
would be “to pay much higher taxes in order to protect the environment.” Responses
ranged from 0 (not at all willing) to 5 (very willing). This question was recoded
into a dichotomous variable (1 = willing or very willing). To create the combined
measure, both the WVS 1999–2001 and ISSP 2000 questions were recoded so that
all zeros were replaced by the mean value for the variable. I then computed the
new tax variable by taking the average of these two recoded variables, yielding a
sample of sixty-four countries.

Environmental Movement Behavior

Measures of environmental movement behavior come from the International

Social Survey Program ISSP 1993 Environment I and ISSP 2000 Environment
II, for selected countries. Movement behavior is measured as an additive scale
ranging from 0 to 4 summed across the following items: “In the last five years,
have you. . . .” (a) signed a petition about an environmental issue? (b) given
money to an environmental group? (c) taken part in a protest or demonstration
about an environmental issue? and (d) Are you a member of any group whose
main aim is to preserve or protect the environment? Responses to each of these
questions were recoded with values of 1 indicating yes and 0 indicating no. They
were then summed to produce an additive scale and means for each country were
calculated.
116  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics for Public Opinion Measures, Environmental Policy,

and Environmental Movement Behavior

Variable N Mean SD

Environmental policy
Less government subsidies, 2004 94 4.15 0.76
Environmental projects, 2004 136 53.13 28.37
Environmental governance, 2004 97 37.39 10.63

Public opinion
1990–1993
Willingness to pay higher prices 34 0.51 0.11
Willingness to pay higher taxes 21 0.35 0.10
Willingness to accept cuts 21 2.85 0.33
1999–2001
Willingness to pay higher prices 27 2.93 0.32
Willingness to pay higher taxes 64 0.07 0.04
Willingness to accept cuts 27 2.76 0.38

Environmental movement behavior

Protest behavior, 1993 20 0.51 0.29
Protest behavior, 2000 26 0.46 0.24

Timing of Variables in the Analysis

As Meadows and Randers point out, “the delays associated with most environmental
processes will require us to add an explicit consideration of the time dimension in
formulating environmental policy . . . environmental pollution is not a momentary
problem with an instantaneous solution” (1972: 213–14). In order to make the argu-
ment that national policy is influenced by public opinion, such public opinion must
be manifested prior to the implementation of environmental policy. It is important
to measure variables at different time points as well as to order variables in time.
For all analyses performed, public opinion measures come from two time blocks:
1990–93 and 1999–2001. All measures of environmental policy were collected
between 2001 and 2004. A total of 146 countries are included in the complete data
set. Number of cases, means, and standard deviations for all variables used in this
article are presented in Table 1. Listwise deletion was performed in the case of
missing values.4
 FALL 2008  117

Table 2

Relationships of Public Opinion Measures (1990–1993 and 1999–2001) and

Policy Outcomes

Public opinion
Willingness to
Willingness to Willingess to accept cuts in
Policy outcomes pay higher taxes pay higher prices standard of living

A. 1990–1993
Less energy subsidies 0.219 0.656*** 0.389*
Environment projects 0.073 –0.149 0.264
Environmental governance 0.224 0.557*** 0.479**

  B. 1999–2001
Less energy subsidies –0.055 0.630*** 0.453**
Environment projects 0.332** 0.167 0.293
Environmental governance –0.148 0.590*** 0.559***

***p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.10 (two-tailed test).

Results

The Direct Effect of Public Opinion on Policy

Table 2 presents correlations between public opinion measures and policy outcomes
for 1990–93 and 1999–2001. In examining the relationships among public opinion
and policy (for selected measures), it becomes evident that one measure of public
opinion may not be related to all measures of policy. Moreover, different measures
of public opinion impact policy measures differently. This reinforces the notion
that it may not make sense to construct one measure for opinion or one measure
for policy, as opinion operates differently depending on which policy measure is
being investigated. Therefore, it makes sense to use single items to represent public
opinion and policy rather than latent constructs.
The relationship between willingness to pay taxes and environmental projects
appears to be different in nature from its relationship to other policy measures.
Although it is not significantly related to policy in 1990–93, taxes is moderately
and positively correlated with environmental projects in 1999–2001 (r = 0.332). In
contrast, although these correlations are not significant, taxes correlates negatively
with the other two measures of policy. Willingness to pay higher prices is strongly
and positively correlated with less energy subsidies and environmental governance
118  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

in both 1990–93 and 1999–2001 (r = 0.656 and 0.630 with energy subsidies; r =
0.557 and 0.590 with governance); it is most strongly related to less energy sub-
sidies across both time periods. Willingness to accept cuts in standard of living is
positively correlated to less energy subsidies and environmental governance across
both time periods (r = 0.389 and 0.453 with subsidies; r = 0.479 and 0.559 with
governance); it is most strongly correlated to environmental governance.
A pattern emerges across the two time periods: measures of public opinion
diverge in terms of how they are related to particular indicators of policy. Such
a divergence has implications for further regression analysis into the nature of
specific public opinion measures with specific policy outcomes. It appears that
willingness to pay higher taxes is most strongly related to environmental projects.
This relationship makes sense; governments need to generate tax revenue in order
to fund such projects. Willingness to pay higher prices is most strongly related to
the presence of less government subsidies for energy and materials. This too appears
logical; in nations where the public is more readily prepared to pay higher prices
if the environment is being protected, corporations may feel less pressure to lobby
against stricter environmental regulations. Thus, large corporations may be more
likely to adopt more energy-efficient modes of production if the public appears to
be willing to absorb some of that cost by paying higher prices. Willingness to accept
cuts in standard of living is most strongly related to environmental governance. It
may be that in enforcing stricter environmental regulations, government funds are
diverted from other “quality of life” needs.

The Indirect Effect of Public Opinion on Policy, Through Movement

Behavior

Table 3 presents the bivariate correlations between environmental movement behav-

ior and environmental policy. As can be seen from the correlations, environmental
movement behavior is strongly and positively correlated with less government
subsidies and environmental governance in both opinion periods. The relationship
is stronger when using the 1999–2001 opinion period, indicating that the behavior–
policy link may be more robust across shorter opinion gaps. Movement behavior
is not significantly related to environmental projects.
Using path analysis, I estimate the indirect influence of public opinion on policy
operating through movement behavior. Figures 1, 2, and 3 present the results for
opinion periods 1990–93 and 1999–2001. As can be seen from Figure 1, there are
no significant paths between willingness to pay higher taxes and environmental
projects for either opinion period.
Figure 2 presents the direct and indirect paths from willingness to pay higher
prices to less government subsidies. For the first opinion period willingness to pay
higher prices has both a direct effect on less government subsidies and an indirect
effect through movement behavior. The direct effect of prices is substantially higher
than the indirect effect (direct β = 0.413 versus indirect β = 0.203). However, the
 FALL 2008  119

Table 3

Relationships Between Environmental Movement Behavior (1990–1993 and

1999–2001) and Policy Outcomes

Environmental movement behavior

Policy outcomes A. 1990–1993 B. 1999–2001

Less energy subsidies 0.632*** 0.713***

Environment projects 0.165 0.180
Environmental governance 0.614*** 0.751***

***p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.10 (two-tailed test).

Figure 1. Path Analysis with Standardized Coefficients: Willingness to Pay

Higher Taxes, Environmental Movement Behavior, and Environmental
Projects
a
–0.070 ns (1990–1993)
b
0 .081 ns (1999–2001)

Willingness to pay Environmental

higher taxes projects

0.276 ns (1990–1993) 0.185 ns (1990–1993)

0.067 ns (1999–2001) 0.175 ns (1999–2001)

Environmental
movement behavior

N = 17 for all paths for 1990–1993.

a

N = 23 for all paths for 1999–2001.

b

All paths are significant at p < 0.10 (two-tailed test) except for those labeled “ns.”

direct effect of willingness to pay higher prices on less government subsidies is

slightly smaller than the direct effect of movement behavior on this policy measure
(β = 0.413 versus β = 0.445). The total causal effect of public opinion on envi-
ronmental policy is 0.616 in the 1990–93 opinion period. Using the 1999–2001
opinion period, willingness to pay higher prices does not have a significant direct
effect on subsidies but does operate indirectly through movement behavior (indirect
β = 0.422). These results lend support to my first hypothesis, that public opinion
120  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Figure 2. Path Analysis with Standardized Coefficients: Willingness to Pay

Higher Prices, Environmental Movement Behavior, and Less Government
Subsidies
a
0.413 (1990–1993)
b
0.209 ns (1999–2001)

Willingness to pay Less government

higher prices subsidies

0.453 (1990–1993) 0.445 (1990–1993)

0.765 (1999–2001) 0.552 (1999–2001)

Environmental
movement behavior

N = 18 for all paths for 1990–1993.

a

N = 24 for all paths for 1999–2001.

b

All paths are significant at p < 0.10 (two-tailed test) except for those labeled “ns.”

directly affects policy (for 1990–93 only), and support my second hypothesis, that
public opinion may be mediated by other factors (for both opinion periods).
Figure 3 shows that willingness to accept cuts in standard of living does not
produce a direct effect on environmental governance for either opinion period
examined. However, cuts does have an indirect effect on governance through
movement behavior (β = 0.219 for 1990–93 and β = 0.433 for 1999–2001). These
results lend support to my second hypothesis concerning the indirect impact of
public opinion on policy.

Summary of Path Analyses

The simple path analyses provide evidence that there is both an indirect and direct
path from public opinion to environmental policy, for select measures. Thus, with
respect to these measures of public opinion and policy, there is support for both my
first and second hypotheses, with some caveats. There is variation in magnitude of
the effect depending on whether we are looking at public opinion roughly a decade
before policy implementation or less than five years before. The direct effect of
opinion on policy appears to be stronger over longer, rather than shorter, time gaps.
However, the indirect effects (through environmental movement behavior) of both
prices and cuts on policy are both higher when modeling public opinion from the
more recent time period.
 FALL 2008  121

Figure 3. Path Analysis with Standardized Coefficients: Willingness to

Accept Cuts, Environmental Movement Behavior, and Environmental
Governance
a
0.268 ns (1990–1993)
b
0.115 ns (1999–2001)

Willingness to Environmental
accept cuts governance

0.441 (1990–1993) 0.496 (1990–1993)

0.640 (1999–2001) 0.677 (1999–2001)

Environmental
movement behavior

N = 18 for all paths for 1990–1993.

a

N = 24 for all paths for 1999–2001.

b

All paths are significant at p < 0.10 (two-tailed test) except for those labeled “ns.”

There is also variation in terms of whether the effects of opinion on policy are
direct or indirect (or both), depending on the specific measures used as well as the
time period in which public opinion is measured. Only one of the three measures
of public opinion (prices) has a significant, direct effect on environmental policy.
Willingness to pay higher prices also appears to indirectly affect policy, operating
through environmental movement behavior (both opinion periods). Willingness to
accept cuts appears to indirectly influence policy, operating through environmental
movement behavior (both opinion periods).

Controlling for Prior Environmental Policy

Path analyses lend support to the notion that there is an impact of public opinion
on environmental policy. I now turn to the issue of whether or not that relation-
ship continues to hold when modeling the effect of prior environmental policy
on the opinion–policy relationship. Simple path analyses are conducted to model
this relationship; a summary of these models is presented in Table 4.5 Even when
prior policy is included in the model, willingness to pay higher prices still has a
direct impact on less government subsidies and willingness to accept cuts still
has an indirect effect on environmental governance through movement behavior.
This suggests that although prior environmental policies may partially explain
future policies, there are still public opinion effects on policy net of such past
policies.
122  INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Table 4

Summary of Path Analysis Models for the Relationship Between Opinion

and Policy, Mediated by Environmental Movement Behavior

Opinion period 1990–1993 Opinion period 1999–2001

Public opinion Direct effect Indirect effect Direct effect Indirect effect

Taxes NO NO NO NO
Prices YES* YES NO YES
Cuts NO YES NO YES*

*Relationship is still significant when controlling for prior environmental policy.

Conclusion and Discussion

Results lend support to the idea that there is a relationship between proenviron-
mental public opinion expressed as a willingness to engage in monetary and/or
lifestyle forfeitures and select measures of environmental policy—in the form of
less government subsidies, environmental projects, and environmental governance.
In general, stronger support for monetary and lifestyle sacrifices makes it more
likely that these policy measures are enacted.
This article has contributed to the literature on environmental policy formation
and to the literature on social movement outcomes—by illustrating that public
opinion matters. Governments are listening to their citizens on some level, and
we can be fairly optimistic that changing values toward the environment, on the
part of the general public as well as elites, may play a pivotal role in driving en-
vironmental change.
On a cautionary note, it has not been the intent of this research to generalize
findings to all countries or to provide a complete portrait of the complexity of the
relationships between public opinion, protest behavior, and environmental policy;
however, it does offer some information about the consistency of the opinion–
policy relationship across a number of countries. This research diverges from the
profusion of studies that take a case study approach to understanding the processes
that operate to produce these outcomes, in that its focus is cross-national and com-
parative. However, such approaches are not without merit, and in fact, in order to
truly understand the linkages between public opinion, social movement behavior,
and environmental policy that have been established here, a more refined approach
may be warranted.
Thus, I consider this research to be a catalyst for future projects aimed at un-
derstanding cross-national differences and similarities in the ways that individuals
ascribe meaning to the natural “environment,” in terms of mass attitudes and as
 FALL 2008  123

explicit actions with global consequences. Future research should model other
dimensions of public opinion on the environment as well as additional measures
of environmental policy. A case study approach, in concert with country-level
analysis, may go further in illuminating the underlying reasons for the relation-
ships that have been found; in particular, how it can be that different dimensions of
public concern for the environment can have different effects on diverse measures
of policy. This research has taken a step in that direction, but with greater data
availability in combination with the advantages that case studies can offer, it may
be possible to reveal the rich details of how public opinion interacts with other
causal mechanisms—such as elite attitudes and behaviors, interest-group strength,
and even voting behavior.

Notes

1. The current article represents part of the author’s broader research program devoted
to the topic of the opinion–policy relationship.
2. ISSP data come from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 1993: En-
vironment, and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2000: Environment II
provided by the Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, Cologne. WVS data come
from the World Values Survey 1990–1993 and World Values Survey 1999–2002 provided
by the World Values Survey Association.
3. At the individual level, these measures of environmental attitudes are only weakly
correlated with individual earnings or family income.
4. Analyses were also performed with multiple imputation to replace missing values,
using the PROC MI and PROC MIAnalyze procedures in SAS V9 (Allison 2002). Results
were similar to results using listwise deletion. In some cases there were differences in
coefficient size in analyses with willingness to pay taxes and environmental projects in the
model. These findings are available from the author upon request.
5. Full path analysis results are available from the author upon request. These models
control for environmental policy implemented before the major indicators of public opin-
ion and policy were measured. Prior environmental treaties is a measure of the number of
environmentally related treaties a country has signed prior to 1984 out of a total of 303,
accessed from the Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators (ENTRI) treaty locator
database (CIESIN 1996).

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