{"id":6525,"date":"2015-12-15T07:32:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T07:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6525"},"modified":"2015-12-15T07:32:33","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T07:32:33","slug":"british-social-attitudes-towards-sustainability-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/12\/15\/british-social-attitudes-towards-sustainability-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"British social attitudes towards sustainability issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Jamie Agombar and the NUS team for alerting me to an\u00a0analysis of British Social Attitudes survey data carried out by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.natcen.ac.uk\/news-media\/press-releases\/2015\/november\/higher-ed\/?utm_campaign=Newsletter+December+2015+FINAL&amp;utm_source=emailCampaign&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content\">NatCen<\/a> which found that those with a degree were [i] more likely to feel that they understood the causes of environmental problems and [ii] to disagree that we worry too much about the future of the environment and not enough about prices and jobs today.<\/p>\n<p>Here is some finer detail:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>55% of those with a degree selected a number at the top of the answer scale when asked how much they felt they know about the causes of environmental problems, compared with 34%\u00a0of those with A-level qualifications or below degree level HE\/FE qualifications, 25%\u00a0of those with GCSE qualifications and 20%\u00a0of those without qualifications.<\/li>\n<li>Levels of concern about environmental issues were highest among those with a degree (70%) and lowest amongst those in the GCSE group (45%).<\/li>\n<li>The majority of those with a degree level qualification disagreed or disagreed strongly (60%) that we worry too much about the environment, compared to around two-fifths of those with A-levels (41%) and those with below degree level HE\/FE qualifications (38%). Around a quarter of those with GCSEs (24%) and 15% of those in the no qualifications group, felt that we worry too much about the environment at the expense of prices and jobs.<\/li>\n<li>Considering the statement \u2018<em>The price of a plane ticket should reflect the environmental damage that flying causes, even if this makes air travel much more expensive<\/em>\u2019,\u00a0agreement was highest among those with a degree (56 %)\u00a0followed by those with A-levels (45%), then those with GCSEs\/ below degree level HE\/FE qualifications (39 and 38% respectively) and was lowest among those without qualifications (35%).<\/li>\n<li>Considering the statement \u2018<em>For the sake of the environment everyone should reduce how much they use their cars<\/em>\u2019, levels of agreement were highest among those with degree level qualifications (72%), followed by the A-level group (67%). Those with GCSEs (rather than the no qualification group) showed the lowest levels of agreement at 51%.<\/li>\n<li>Considering the statement \u2018<em>There is no point in reducing my car use to help the environment unless others do the same<\/em>\u2019, 39%\u00a0of those with a degree level qualification disagreed or disagreed strongly that there was no point reducing their own car use unless others did the same, compared to 17% of those without qualifications and 16% of those with GCSEs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What to make of this? \u00a0Maybe it's fairly simple:\u00a0That is, awareness, interest, concern, etc tend to correlate with education level \u2013 a greater ability to think rationally about issues, to analyse, and to synthesise \u2013 and a greater tendency to understand and care about such matters tends to increase with maturity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Jamie Agombar and the NUS team for alerting me to an\u00a0analysis of British Social Attitudes survey data carried out by NatCen which found that those with a degree were [i] more likely to feel that they understood the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}