Diverse segments of the US public underestimate the environmental concerns of minority and low-income Americans

Abstract

In a nationally representative survey experiment, diverse segments of the US public underestimated the environmental concerns of nonwhite and low-income Americans and misperceived them as lower than those of white and more affluent Americans. Moreover, both whites and nonwhites and higher- and lower-income respondents associated the term "environmentalist" with whites and the well-educated, suggesting that shared cultural stereotypes may drive these misperceptions. This environmental belief paradox-a tendency to misperceive groups that are among the most environmentally concerned and most vulnerable to a wide range of environmental impacts as least concerned about the environment-was largely invariant across demographic groups and also extended to the specific issue of climate change. Suggesting these beliefs are malleable, exposure to images of a racially diverse (vs. nondiverse) environmental organization in an embedded randomized experiment reduced the perceived gap between whites' and nonwhites' environmental concerns and strengthened associations between nonwhites and the category "environmentalists" among minority respondents. These findings suggest that stereotypes about others' environmental attitudes may pose a barrier to broadening public engagement with environmental initiatives, particularly among populations most vulnerable to negative environmental impacts.

Keywords: climate change; diversity; social influence; stereotypes; sustainability.

Fig. 1.

Mean perception of each rated demographic group’s concern (red bar) and each group’s mean reported concern (green bar) for the environment, aggregated across diversity treatment conditions. Error bars are 95% CIs. Groups are ordered, left to right, by magnitude of underestimation.

Fig. 2.

Racial/ethnic (Left) and class (wealth and education) and age (Right) associations with the term “environmentalist” by respondent race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (education and income), respectively. Bars indicate strength of association with each rated category relative to the scale midpoint. Scales were 1 = not at all to 5 = very much and 1 = very poor/uneducated/young, 3 = neutral, 5 = very wealthy/educated/old. Error bars are 95% CIs.

Fig. 3.

Average bias in perceptions of whites’ environmental concern relative to nonwhites’ (Left) and associations between whites and “environmentalists,” relative to nonwhites (Right), by exposure to a diverse (dark bars) or nondiverse (light bars) environmental organization. Error bars are 95% CIs.