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Empirical Research on Religion & Ecology
About this bibliography
This list is intended to provide a comprehensive survey of empirical research into religion and environmental action (for lack of better terminology). The reader will find that this includes a large range of peer-reviewed journal articles in social scientific and religious studies journals, but this list also includes a smaller group of monographs in which original empirical research plays a part and articles or chapters which discuss methodological approaches for empirical studies in religion and ecology.
Abstracts included here are produced for an English-speaking audience, but the bibliography is meant to include research in any language. It you notice any errors or missing data, or if you are aware of any research that is not represented here, please send us an email with a citation, a PDF (if you’re the author), and an abstract (if possible) and we’ll be quite glad to include it here. Keeping in mind that this is a diverse discipline straddling both humanities and social sciences, please do note that many very fine studies in religion and ecology aren’t included here because they lack a substantial or original discussion of empirical research.
This bibliography was originally generated to support our empirical work in Scottish churches for the Ancestral Time project and is a work in progress. Over the next year, it will include a variety of research outputs related to our own project research. I also mean to update the list in the coming months so that readers can sort and filter by specific details of each study (sample size, details of research subject etc.). A limited set of these are already represented with the “tag cloud” below. Any feedback is most welcome and we will continue to add new research to this list as it becomes available.
Thanks are also in order to Anthony J. Blasi who maintains the ARDA Sociology of Religion Searchable Bibliographic Database which provided several of the items included below. The dissertation (listed below under 2011) by Martine Vonk provides a useful summary of data involved in empirical studies in Appendix A of her dissertation which was also consulted for this bibliography.
Please get in touch if you’d like to obtain this bibliography in an electronic format. Also, this list is replicated on CiteULike,Mendeley and Zotero for those who are interested in viewing there.
The Bibliography
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By clicking on any of the tags listed directly below you can filter this list by locations studied, methodologies employed (this is not yet a comprehensive list), or survey instruments used. You can also use the drop-down boxes below to filter the list by a variety of elements including date, author, or type.
@article{schultzzelezny_2000a,
title = {A Multinational Perspective on the Relation between Judeo-Christian Religious Beliefs and Attitudes of Environmental Concern},
author = { P. Wesley Schultz and Lynnette Zelezny and Nancy J. Dalrymple},
url = {http://eab.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/4/576},
doi = {10.1177/00139160021972676},
year = {2000},
date = {2000-01-01},
journal = {Environment and Behavior},
volume = {32},
number = {4},
pages = {576-591},
abstract = {Drawing on a recent multinational survey of environmental attitudes and behaviors, we examined the relation between religious beliefs and environmental concern. Measures included the revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), Thompson and Barton's ecocentrism and anthropocentrism scales, a 12-item proenvironmental behavior scale, a measure of biblical literalism, and a measure of religious importance. Data are reported from 2,160 university students from Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, the United States, and Venezuela. The data revealed a consistent pattern across countries. Respondents who expressed more literal beliefs in the Bible scored significantly lower on the NEP, lower on ecocentric environmental concerns, and higher on anthropocentric environmental concerns. No significant relation was found between biblical literalism and self-reported proenvironmental behavior.},
keywords = {Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, NEP, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, trans-national, USA, Venezuela},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Drawing on a recent multinational survey of environmental attitudes and behaviors, we examined the relation between religious beliefs and environmental concern. Measures included the revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), Thompson and Barton's ecocentrism and anthropocentrism scales, a 12-item proenvironmental behavior scale, a measure of biblical literalism, and a measure of religious importance. Data are reported from 2,160 university students from Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, the United States, and Venezuela. The data revealed a consistent pattern across countries. Respondents who expressed more literal beliefs in the Bible scored significantly lower on the NEP, lower on ecocentric environmental concerns, and higher on anthropocentric environmental concerns. No significant relation was found between biblical literalism and self-reported proenvironmental behavior.
@article{hayesmarangudakis_2000a,
title = {Religion and Environmental Issues within Anglo-American Democracies},
author = { Bernadette C. Hayes and Manussos Marangudakis},
url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/3512527},
doi = {10.2307/3512527},
issn = {0034673X},
year = {2000},
date = {2000-01-01},
journal = {Review of Religious Research},
volume = {42},
number = {2},
pages = {159-174},
publisher = {Religious Research Association, Inc.},
abstract = {Using Lynn White's historical thesis that Judeo-Christianity has cherished the human exploitation of nature as our frame of reference, this article examines the impact of religion on environmental attitudes and behaviour within the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand. Based on the 1993 ISSP Environment survey, a nationally representative sample of the adult population in each nation, the results suggest that: (a) in general, Christians and Non-Christians do not significantly differ regarding their concern for the environment; (b) there are some significant inter-denominational as well as intradenominational differences within the Christian tradition in terms of their attitudes towards the environment; and (c) overall, religious identification is an relatively weak and inconsistent predictor of environmental attitudes and behaviour across nations.},
keywords = {Canada, ISSP Environment survey, New Zealand, UK, USA},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Using Lynn White's historical thesis that Judeo-Christianity has cherished the human exploitation of nature as our frame of reference, this article examines the impact of religion on environmental attitudes and behaviour within the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand. Based on the 1993 ISSP Environment survey, a nationally representative sample of the adult population in each nation, the results suggest that: (a) in general, Christians and Non-Christians do not significantly differ regarding their concern for the environment; (b) there are some significant inter-denominational as well as intradenominational differences within the Christian tradition in terms of their attitudes towards the environment; and (c) overall, religious identification is an relatively weak and inconsistent predictor of environmental attitudes and behaviour across nations.
Lalonde, Roxanne (1998): Environmental attitudes and religious beliefs: A comparative examination. University of Alberta, 1998.(Type: PhD Thesis | Abstract | BibTeX | Tags: Canada, NEP)
@phdthesis{lalonde_1998a,
title = {Environmental attitudes and religious beliefs: A comparative examination},
author = { Roxanne L. Lalonde},
year = {1998},
date = {1998-01-01},
address = {Ann Arbor},
school = {University of Alberta},
abstract = {The relationships between people's beliefs, attitudes, and the behaviours arising from them have been studied for many years. The environmental focus of these concepts has also received attention. The causal relations between attitude and behaviour are still unresolved, especially in the environmental context. It appears that belief, especially people's cosmological worldviews, may rest at the core of the issue. Understanding how people feel about the world and, in particular, their relationship with nature seems essential to understanding their attitudes and behaviours towards the other inhabitants of the planet. Furthermore, people's spiritual beliefs (whether arising from a recognized religion or not) seem fundamental to their personal orientation, especially in terms of how they relate to the world around them. Researchers have examined the religious belief-environmental attitude interface using standard methods of social science, primarily those with a quantitative or positivistic orientation, measuring specific variables. The study reported in this thesis builds on that research and employs a qualitative approach to supplement conventional statistical methods. The study used two questionnaires distributed via electronic mail, a relatively new tool in social science research. By employing a more open-ended and exploratory analytical strategy, a number of important findings emerged. First, a relationship between environmental attitude and religious belief was discovered. However, the nature of that relationship encompasses more than conventional understandings of the concept. Second, an unexpected level of unity was revealed in the respondents' collective contribution to devising a global environmental ethic. Third, a number of principles or concepts appear to represent common ground for an interface between two distinct domains: ecology and spirituality. Fourth, the very nature and definition of the concept of religion itself seems to be on trial, a development that has profound implications for many aspects of human society. Finally, further research is clearly necessary, building on that conducted in this study, employing combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods, and fostering collaborations among researchers from diverse academic disciplines.},
keywords = {Canada, NEP},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {phdthesis}
}
The relationships between people's beliefs, attitudes, and the behaviours arising from them have been studied for many years. The environmental focus of these concepts has also received attention. The causal relations between attitude and behaviour are still unresolved, especially in the environmental context. It appears that belief, especially people's cosmological worldviews, may rest at the core of the issue. Understanding how people feel about the world and, in particular, their relationship with nature seems essential to understanding their attitudes and behaviours towards the other inhabitants of the planet. Furthermore, people's spiritual beliefs (whether arising from a recognized religion or not) seem fundamental to their personal orientation, especially in terms of how they relate to the world around them. Researchers have examined the religious belief-environmental attitude interface using standard methods of social science, primarily those with a quantitative or positivistic orientation, measuring specific variables. The study reported in this thesis builds on that research and employs a qualitative approach to supplement conventional statistical methods. The study used two questionnaires distributed via electronic mail, a relatively new tool in social science research. By employing a more open-ended and exploratory analytical strategy, a number of important findings emerged. First, a relationship between environmental attitude and religious belief was discovered. However, the nature of that relationship encompasses more than conventional understandings of the concept. Second, an unexpected level of unity was revealed in the respondents' collective contribution to devising a global environmental ethic. Third, a number of principles or concepts appear to represent common ground for an interface between two distinct domains: ecology and spirituality. Fourth, the very nature and definition of the concept of religion itself seems to be on trial, a development that has profound implications for many aspects of human society. Finally, further research is clearly necessary, building on that conducted in this study, employing combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods, and fostering collaborations among researchers from diverse academic disciplines.
