The Evolution of the Impact of Religion and Life Satisfaction on Environmental Concern: An Abstract

Abstract

Many research studies have been aimed at understanding the relationship between religious faith and sustainability (Leary et al. 2016; Weaver and Agle 2002; Hope and Jones 2014; Mathras et al. 2016). However, these studies have not shown how attitudes toward these constructs have changed over time. The current research uses publicly available data gathered over a 20-year span to show how the relationships between these constructs have evolved.

Our results show that religiousness (perceiving yourself as a religious person (Brammer et al. 2007) is positively related to environmental concern, but the strength of this relationship has decreased over the 20 years of study. Our results also show that life satisfaction mediates the relationship between religiousness and environmental concern. More importantly, the mediated effect is significantly positive in the first data set and significantly negative in the most recent. Where life satisfaction reinforced the positive relationship between religiousness and environmental concern in the past, it now competes with this positive effect.

There are several implications for this research. Firms engaging in CSR programs may have traditionally viewed the religiousness as indifferent to environmentally focused campaigns. The positive link between religiousness and environmental concern shows that these programs may generate real value for religious individuals.

While life satisfaction significantly mediated the link between religiousness and EC, the indirect path was relatively weak when compared to the direct path. More importantly, while the mediated link through life satisfaction complemented the direct effect in Wave 2, the indirect effect competed with the direct effect in Wave 5 (Zhao et al. 2010). Additional research is needed to understand why this indirect effect changed valence and how this will affect the relationship between religiousness and environmental concern in the years to come.