Values should be understood as broad and abstract concepts like freedom, happiness, justice, service to humanity, nationalism, honesty, equality, although sometimes they can be somewhat concrete such as material wealth accumulation. Values can also be thought of as internal compasses, cherished priorities or moral imperatives to action (Oyserman, 2002). Since values are often equated to a person’s goals or standards in life, so they are the ends rather than the means. Values are therefore strongly tied to individuals and often guides their personality, outlook on life and their behaviors. Values being more central to a person’s character, they are resistant to change, thus capable of influencing other beliefs and attitudes. (Kahle, 1983, Tetlock, 1986). Schwartz (1992) postulated that the different values (see Figure 1) we possess have an inherent structure that is universal and follows a circular motivational continuum. The circularity expresses three features of the structure: adjacent values are motivationally compatible (e.g., security, tradition, and conformity), the similarity between values decreases with the distance between them around the circle, and motivationally opposed values are located on opposite sides of the circle (e.g., tradition opposes stimulation, self-direction and hedonism).
The value-basis approach (Stern, 2000, Oskamp & Schultz, 2005) to understanding environmental attitudes elucidates environmental values of people in three distinct categories: egoistic values (or self-centered to fulfilling one’s need, e.g., success, wealth, status); altruistic values (concern for other people, e.g., neighborhood, countrymen, younger generations); biospheric values (benevolence or concern for all living creatures, e.g., flora and fauna). The traditional values pertaining to the dominant social paradigm (Pirages & Ehrlich, 1974; Milbrath, 1984; Dunlap & Van Liere, 1984) prevalent in the western culture place more importance to individualism, economic growth, progress and materialism as the end goal of development. In recent times, especially after the environmental movement of the 1960s and the ensuing years that galvanized the environmental agenda, the new environmental paradigm (NEP) and its revised version (Oskamp & Schultz, 2005) challenged the traditional worldview, and is holding prominence that emphasizes human-nature relationship, i.e., concept of living by balancing nature and limiting growth by remaining within the boundary of the planet’s carrying capacity.
When it comes to making decisions to tackle or solve environmental issues or towards the management of natural resources, the values of the decision-making stakeholders always play the role of the central guidepost or anchor point. The actions or strategies they take are guided by their deeply held values towards the resources (such as parks, protected forests, conservation sanctuary such as cultural heritage sites of historical significance, and so forth). According to Schwartz (2007), there are seven characteristics of values: (i) they are beliefs linked to emotions; (ii) refer to desirable goals that motivate action; (iii) transcend specific actions and situations; (iv) serve as standards for evaluating actions, policies, people and events (v) form a relatively enduring hierarchical system ordered by importance; (vi) their impact on everyday decisions is rarely conscious and (vii) any action or attitude is guided by the relative importance of multiple, competing values. Compared to values, attitudes are less abstract and less central to the self, relate to specific objects, derive their valence from the values that guide them, and do not serve as standards.
Thus, values are bound together, are interdependent and form a system. When a value is weakened or strengthened, the whole system is affected (Oyserman, 2002) As such, the relative importance of values is magnified because of their aforementioned characteristics and cannot be overlooked while informing sustainable management of natural areas.
Link to Video on Environmental Value Systems:
References:
Dunlap, R. E., & Van Liere, K. D. (1984). Commitment to the dominant social paradigm and concern for environmental quality. Social Science Quarterly, 65, 1013-1028.
Environmental Values: Where do you fit on this earth? https://slideplayer.com/slide/9081115/
Kahle, L. R. (Ed.). (1983). Social values and social change: Adaptation to life in America (p. 237). New York: Praeger.
Milbrath, L. W. (1984). Environmentalists: Vanguard for a new society. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Oskamp, S., & Schultz, P. W. (2005). Attitudes and opinions. Psychology Press.
Oyserman, D. (2002). Values: psychological perspectives.
Pirages, D. C., & Ehrlich, P. R. (1974). Ark II: Social response to environmental imperatives. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.
Schwartz, S. H. (2007). Basic human values: Theory, measurement, and applications. Revue française de sociologie, 47(4), 929.
Stern, P. C. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56,407-424.
Tetlock, P. E. (1986). A value pluralism model of ideological reasoning. Journal of personality and social psychology, 50(4), 819.