Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the effect of natural disasters on individuals’ choice between economic growth and environmental protection. Combining the 2010–2014 wave of the World Values Survey with data on natural disasters from the International Disaster Database, the empirical results provide evidence that respondents from the high-income sub-sample who were affected by natural disasters are more likely to prefer economic growth. However, natural disasters increase the impact of environmental values on the choice between environmental protection and economic growth. As for the low-income sub-sample, natural disasters have no effect on either the choice between economic growth and environmental protection or the relationship between environmental values and pro-environmental choice. This empirical result suggests that individuals in the low-income sub-sample might not causally attribute their experience of extreme weather events to climate change.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Low-income sub-sample: Algeria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ecuador, Ghana, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
High-income sub-sample: Australia, Chile, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United States, Uruguay.
- 2.
I choose a probit rather than logit model because an interpretation of effects as changes in the probability in a probit regression is more convenient when compared to a logit model where effects are interpreted in terms of odds ratios.
References
Adebo, G. M. and Ajewole, O. C., 2012. “Gender and the Urban Environment: Analysis of Willingness to pay for Waste Management Disposal in Ekiti-State, Nigeria.” American International Journal of Contemporary Research 2(5).
Bostrom, A., Morgan, M. G., Fischhoff, B. and Read, D., 1994. “What do people know about global climate change? 1. Mental models.” Risk Analysis 14(6), 959–970.
Brody, S. D., Zahran, S., Vedlitz, A. and Grover, H., 2008. “Examining the Relationship between Physical Vulnerability and Public Perceptions of Global Climate Change in the United States.” Environment and Behavior 40 (1), 72–95.
Cassar, A., Healy, A. and von Kessler, C., 2017. “Trust, Risk, and Time Preferences After a Natural Disaster: Experimental Evidence from Thailand.” World Development 94, 90–105.
Clarc, C. F., Kotchen, M. J. and Moore, M. R., 2003. “Internal and external influences on pro-environmental behaviour: Participation in a green electricity program.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 23, 237–246.
Collins, C. M. and Chambers, S. M., 2005. “Psychology and situational influences on commuter-transport-mode choice.” Environment and Behavior 37(6), 640–661.
Costa, D. L. and Kahn, M. E., 2013. “Energy Conservation “Nudges” and Environmentalist Ideology: Evidence from a Randomized Residential Electricity Field Experiment.” Journal of the European Economic Association 11, 680–702.
CRED, 2015. “The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters: 1995–2015.”
Dai, J., Kesternich, M., Löschel, A. and Ziegler, A., 2014. “Do Chinese individuals believe in global climate change and why? An econometric analysis.” Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics, 28.
Dasgupta, S., Laplante, B., Wang, H. and Wheeler, D., 2002. “Confronting the Environmental Kuznets Curve.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 16(1), 147–16.
Den Butter, F. A. G. and Verbruggen, H., 1994. “Measuring the Trade-Off between Economic Growth and a Clean Environment.” Environmental and Resource Economics 4(2), 187–208.
Diekmann, A. and Franzen, A., 1999. “The Wealth of Nations and Environmental Concern.” Environment and Behavior 31, 540–549.
Dorsch, M. T., 2014. “Economic Development and Determinants of Environmental Concern.” Social Science Quarterly 95(4).
Drews, S., Antal, M. and van den Bergh, J. C. J. M., 2018. “Challenges in Assessing Public Opinion on Economic Growth Versus Environment: Considering European and US Data.” Ecological Economics 146, 265–272.
Dunlap, R. E. and Van Liere, K. D., 1978. “The ‘New Environmental Paradigm’: A proposed measuring instrument and preliminary results.” The Journal of Environmental Education 9(4), 10–19.
Dunlap, R. E., Van Liere, K. D., Mertig, A. G. and Jones, R. E., 2000. “Measuring endorsement of the new ecological paradigm: A revised NEP scale.” Journal of Social Issues 56(3), 425–442.
Egan, P. J. and Mullin, M., 2012. ‘Turning Personal Experience into Political Attitudes: The Effect of Local Weather on Americans’ Perceptions about Global Warming.’ Journal of Politics 74(3), 796–809.
Ferrier, B. A. and Spickett, J. T., 2007. “Natural disasters in developing countries: an environmental health perspective.” Asia Pacific Journal of public Health 19, 18–24.
Franzen, A. and Meyer, R., 2010. “Environmental Attitudes in Cross-National Perspective: A Multilevel Analysis of the ISSP 1993 and 2000.” European Sociological Review 26, 219–34.
Franzen, A. and Vogl, D., 2013. “Acquiescence and the Willingness to Pay for Environmental Protection: A Comparison of the ISSP, WVS, and EVS.” Social Science Quarterly 94(3), 637–659.
Grossman, G. M. and Krueger, A. B., 1995. “Economic Growth and the environment.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, 353–377.
Guimaraes, P., Hefner, F. and Woodward, D., 1993. “Wealth and income effects of natural disasters: An econometric analysis.” Review of Regional Studies 23, 97–114.
Hage, O., Söderholm, P. and Berglund, C., 2009. “Norms and economic motivation in household recycling: Empirical evidence from Sweden.” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 53, 155–165.
Hallegatte, S. and Dumas, P., 2009. “Can natural disasters have positive consequences? Investigating the role of embodies technical change.” Ecological Economics 68(3), 777–786.
Hansla, A., Gamble, A., Juliusson, A. and Gärling, T., 2008. “Psychological Determinants of Attitude towards and Willingness to Pay for Green Electricity.” Energy Policy 36: 768–74.
IMF, 2014. “Proposed new grouping in WEO country classifications: Low-income developing countries.” IMF Policy Paper.
Inglehart, R., 1971. “The silent revolution in Europe: Intergenerational change in post-industrial societies.” American Political Science Review 65, 991–1017.
Inglehart, R., 1995. “Public Support for Environmental Protection: Objective Problems and Subjective Values in 43 Societies.” Political Science and Politics 28, 57–72.
Inglehart, R., 1997. “Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic and political change in 43 societies.” Princeton, NJ: University press.
Israel, D. and Levinson, A., 2004. “Willingness to Pay for Environmental Quality: Testable Empirical Implications of the Growth and Environmental Literature.” The Berkely Electronic Press.
Klomp, J. and Valckx, K., 2014. “Natural disasters and economic growth: A meta-analysis.” Global Environmental Change 26(1), 183–195.
Kozluk, T. and Zipperer, V., 2014. “Environmental policies and productivity growth – a critical review of empirical findings. “OECD Journal: Economic Studies 2014.
Lazzaroni, S. and van Bergeijk, P., 2014. “Natural disasters’ impact, factors of resilience and development: A meta-analysis of the macroeconomic literature.” Ecological Economics 107, 333–346.
Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Feinberg, G. and Howe, P., 2012. “Extreme weather and global climate change in the American mind”, Yale University and George Mason University, New Haven, CT, Yale Project on Global Climate Change Communication.
Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Feinberg, G., Rosenthal, S., Marlon, J. and Howe, P., 2014. “Extreme weather and global climate change in the American mind.”, Yale University and George Mason University, New Haven, CT, Yale Project on Global Climate Change Communication.
Lorenzoni, I., Nicholson-Cole, S. and Whitmarsh, L., 2007. “Barriers perceived to engaging with climate change among the UK public and their policy implications.” Global Environmental Change 17, 445–459.
McDermott, T., 2012. “The Effects of Natural Disasters on Human Capital Accumulation.” IIIS Discussion Paper 391.
Ménioux, J. and Zumsteeg, S., 2012. “Individual perceptions of climate risks: SURVEY AXA/IPSOS.”
Meyer, R. and Liebe, U., 2010. “Are the affluent prepared to pay for the planet? Explaining willingness to pay for public and quasi-private environmental goods in Switzerland.” Population and Environment 32, 42–65.
Murphy, R., 1994. “Rationality and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry into a Changing Relationship.” Boulder: Westview Press.
Neumayer, E. and Plümper, T., 2008. “The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97(3), 551–566.
Norton, E., Wang, H. and Ai, C., 2004. “Computing Interaction Effects and Standard Errors in Logit and Probit Models.” STATA Journal 4, 103–116.
Noy, I., 2009. “The Macroeconomic Consequences of Disasters.” Journal of Development Economics 88(2), 221–231.
Peterson, T. C., Scott, P. A. and Herring, S., 2012. “Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective.” American Meteorological Society.
Raddatz, C., 2007. “Are External Shocks Responsible for the Instability of Output in Low-Income Countries?” Journal of Development Economics 84, 155–187.
Rokeach, M., 1973. “The nature of human values.” New York: Free Press.
Running, K., 2012. “Examining Environmental Concern in Developed, Transitioning and Developing Countries: A Cross-Country Test of the Objective Problems and the Subjective Values Explanations.” World Values Research 5(1), 2012.
Schneider, F., Kallis, G., and Martinez-Alier, J., 2010. “Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability. Introduction to this special issue.” Journal of Cleaner Production 18(6), 511–518.
Schwartz, S. H., 1977. “Normative influences on altruism.” In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology 10, 221–279.
Schwartz, S. H., 2012. “An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values”, Online Readings in Psychology and Culture 2(1).
Schwartz, S. H. and Howard, J. A., 1981. “A normative decision-making model of altruism.” In J. P. Ruston and R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Altruism and helping behavior: Social, personality, and developmental perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 189–211.
Steg, L. and Vlek, C., 2009. “Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: An integrative review and research agenda.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 29, 309–317.
Stern, P. C., 2000. “Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior.” Journal of Social Issues 56 (3), 407–424.
Stern, P. C. and Dietz, T., 1994. “The value basis of environmental concern.’ Journal of Social Issues 50(3), 65–84.
Stern, P. C., Dietz, T. and Guagnano, G. A., 1995. “The new ecological paradigm in social psychological context.” Environment and Behavior 27, 723–743.
Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., Abel, T., Guagnano, G. A. and Kalof, L., 1999. “A value-belief-norm theory of support for social movements: The case of environmentalism.” Research in Human Ecology 6(2), 81–97.
Strömberg, D., 2007. “Natural Disasters, Economic Development, and Humanitarian Aid.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(3), 199–222.
UNISDR, 2015. “The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters.”
Van der Linden, S., 2015. “The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions: Towards a comprehensive model.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 41, 112–124.
Van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Feinberg, G. and Maibach, E., 2014. “How to communicate the scientific consensus on climate change: Plan facts, pie charts or metaphors?” Climatic Change 126(1–2), 255–262.
Whitmarsh, L., 2008. “Are flood victims more concerned about global climate change than other people? The role of direct experience in risk perception and behavioral response.” Journal of Risk Research 11 (3), 351–374.
Zelezny, L. C., Chua, P. and Aldrich, C., 2000. “Elaborating on gender Differences in Environmentalism.” Journal of Social Issues 56 (3), 443–457.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Udalov, V. (2019). The Impact of Natural Disasters on Individuals’ Choice Between Economic Growth and Environmental Protection: Empirical Evidence from the World Values Survey. In: Behavioural Economics of Climate Change. SpringerBriefs in Climate Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03532-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03532-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03531-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03532-7
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)