Cultural Differences in the Environmental Worldview of Children

Abstract

The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) is a popular measure of environmental concern and pro-environmental orientation of adults, which has recently been modified for use with children. For this paper, we have collected questionnaires from 1586 children from three different countries and continents (i.e. Zimbabwe, Belgium and Vietnam). In this paper we will present the NEP-scores and the search for dimensionality of the scales, across the different populations, by means of factor analyses. The results indicate that there is a clear and highly significant cultural influence on the environmental worldview of children, when developed and developing countries are compared. Such differences are important for those designing and evaluating environmental education initiatives because such initiatives need to be rooted in the local specific situation – both physically and attitudinally. Keywords: Environmental worldview; new ecological paradigm; NEP scale for children; cross-cultural differences

Keywords

• Environmental worldview; new ecological paradigm; NEP scale for children; cross-cultural differences