The Social Bases of Environmental Concern: A Review of Hypotheses, Explanations and Empirical Evidence

M » THE past decade social scientists have shown a great deal of interest in public attitudes toward environmental problems and issues, as reflected by the large number of studies of public concern with environmental quality (for a recent bibliography of such studies see Dunlap and Van Liere, 1978). Although several researchers have attempted to document changing levels of "environmental concern" among the public (Buttel and Flinn, 1974; Grossman and Potter, 1977b), the central issue addressed by researchers increasingly has been to determine the social bases of concern for environmental quality. Whether for theoretical reasons (Hornback, 1974) or because of potential policy implications (Dillman and Christenson, 1972), de-Abstract This paper reports an evaluation of existing knowledge regarding the social bases of public concern with environmental quality. First, five popular hypotheses asserting relationships between environmental concern and eight demographic and social variables are reviewed, with particular attention paid to the theoretical explana-tions offered in support of each hypothesized relationship.. Second, the results of 21 relevant studies are evaluated to determine the degree to which the empirical evidence supports the hypothesized relationships. Third, implications of the results of the review for future research are discussed