Attitude Formation and Political Behavior in Response to Global Change

该项目将开发一套创新的工具，以研究公众如何对新出现的全球环境问题作出反应。该建议假定，对环境问题采取行动的意愿受到个人的基本背景和价值观以及环境问题进入他们的认识和为他们制定的方式的某种组合的影响。研究人员将设计一套问题来评估人们对四个具体环境问题采取行动的意愿：温室效应变暖、物种丧失，以及在研究过程中选择的两个“新出现的”环境问题。问卷中涉及每个环境问题的小片段将通过实验加以处理，以使其涉及对个人、对他人或对生物圈的损害主张，以及这些损害主张是否受到某些专家的争议。采取行动的意愿将通过一系列问题来评估，这些问题包括是否愿意为对策支付费用，是否有可能参加向私营企业和政府机构施加压力的活动，以解决环境问题。这些小插曲和问卷的其他部分将通过一系列试点研究开发出来，然后在一个小规模（N=200）的电话调查中使用，调查对象是居住在弗吉尼亚州北部的成年人的代表性样本。如果这个项目是成功的，研究人员考虑进行一个更大的调查，采用实验不同的问卷调查在这里发展。这个项目将有助于了解一般公众在什么条件下可能参加旨在处理新出现的环境问题的活动。此外，这项研究将提高我们对新出现和不稳定问题的态度形成的一般过程的理解。

This project will develop an innovative set of instruments to study how members of the general public react to emerging global environmental problems. The proposal assumes that willingness to take action on environmental issues is influenced by some combination of the underlying backgrounds and values of individuals and the way in which environmental issues enter their awareness and are framed for them. The researchers will design a set of questions to assess willingness to take action in regard to four specific environmental problems: greenhouse warming, species loss, and two "newly emerging" environmental issues to be chosen during the course of the research. Vignettes in the questionnaire involving each environmental problem will be experimentally manipulated to vary whether they involve claims of harm to the individual, to others, or to the biosphere, and whether such claims of harm are said to be disputed by some experts or not. Willingness to take action will be assessed through a variety of questions concerning willingness to pay for countermeasures and likelihood of joining activities to pressure private industry and government agencies to deal with environmental problems. These vignettes and other parts of the questionnaire will be developed through a series of pilot studies and then employed in a small scale (N=200) telephone survey of a representative sample of adults living in Northern Virginia. If this project is successful, the researchers contemplate mounting a larger investigation employing the experimentally varying questionnaire vignettes developed here. This project will contribute to an understanding of the conditions under which members of the general public are likely to join activities designed to deal with emerging environmental problems. In addition, this research will improve our understanding of the general process by which attitudes in regard to emerging and unstable issues become formed.