A Panel Regression Study on Multiple Predictors of Environmental Concern for 82 Countries Across Seven Years*

Objective: This article evaluates the extent to which economic affluence, ecological degradation, integration into the world polity, and economic globalization each contributes to the change in environmental concern in 82 countries across seven years. Method: Using multivariate panel regression, I have analyzed a combined data set of four waves of World Values Surveys and three waves of surveys from the International Social Survey Program. Results: Findings reveal that exposure to ecological degradation is positively related to growing environmental concern, whereas economic affluence has a negative association. In addition, integration into the world polity does not affect environmental concern and the two indicators of economic globalization have mixed impact. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that potentially influential factors have different influence over public environmental concern. Thus, a parsimonious explanation is inadequate since there is no universalistic factor that can account for all variations in environmental concern