Connection between Race and Environmental Attitudes

Abstract

For my research project, I will be looking at the connection between race and environmental attitudes or concerns. I will be focusing specifically on how minorities like Hispanics and African Americans differ in attitudes when compared to white people. In my research, I will be looking at how environmental attitudes change among whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. Race has been found to influence the way people see environmental issues and has been found that different races care for the environment in different ways such as caring about recycling or making environmentally friendly purchases, and others in a more personal matter such as caring about air pollution or water pollution. It is important to study environmental concerns because we all must do our part to take care of the earth. Looking at race allows us to dig deeper at barriers that different people may face that won’t allow them to do their part in helping the community keep our earth healthy and clean. I hypothesize that white people are always willing to help the environment, versus Hispanics and African Americans are usually the ones affected by environmental issues but are not aware of it. I believe that minorities will have more important issues to worry about than the environment. My research question will be: Do race and social class have any effect on people’s environmental attitudes or do lower-class minorities have bigger issues to focus on than the environment? For my research, I will be using secondary data analysis from The General Social Survey (GSS) code book which contains both a great amount of data as well as a series of cross-sectional interviews. The sample size within this data was 4,032 fully completed from 27,591 lines of the sample that were taken between three batches between 12/1/2020 to 2/24/2021. All three sample batches’ main mode of data collection was through a web instrument and “supplemented with a phone for a limited number of cases who required it.”

Details

Session 1

9:30am – 11:00am

Grand Salon