Class-based environmentalism: Towards a multidimensional and mixed methods approach.

This project examines the relation between social class and environmentalism. Environmentalism refers to both attitudes about environmental problems and pro-environmental behaviour. The key research question is: "How and why do people from different social classes differ in their tendency towards environmentalism?" While previous research has been dominated by a unidimensional understanding of both social class and environmentalism, these approaches fail to appreciate the complexity of their relation. I argue that a multidimensional approach is needed because each social class dimension may relate differently to each dimension of environmentalism. Social class has an economic, cultural, social and socio-professional dimension. Environmentalism has an attitudinal dimension (the severity of environmental problems, its consequences, causes and solutions) and a behavioural dimension (behavioural practices and the reasons why people perform them). In this project, quantitative and qualitative data are combined into a mixed methods research design. Quantitative methods will examine and compare how social class dimensions relate to the dimensions of environmentalism, based on data (n= +/-1500) from the Flemish Survey on Socio-Cultural Shifts (2010, 2016, 2017) and the International Social Survey Programme (2010). Qualitative methods, based on interview data, search for explanations to understand why social class is related to environmentalism, thus explaining quantitative findings.

Keywords:ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL CLASS

Disciplines:Sociology of social class, Environmental sociology