This paper tackles whether it is possible to identify cognitive biases that foster environmental concern among public opinion. In particular, the study focuses on the mere exposure effect. Regression analysis was conducted on data concerning Spain and Italy to test the hypotheses that (1) exposing individuals to proenvironmental stimuli in the form of physical natural environments or recycling policies and (2) belonging to younger generations today is associated with a greater extent of environmental concern. The results confirmed both the hypotheses, suggesting environmental policies that affect individuals in their everyday lives, besides being beneficial for the environment, make the public opinion more conscious about the issue
The human mind is not necessarily willing to assess costs and benefits every time it faces a decision. It often prefers to rely on cognitive shortcuts (i.e., heuristics) enabling it to decide rapidly and satisfactorily. Most literature on heuristics and biases suggests that a common cognitive shortcut individuals take is looking at what is close to judge what is far. An experiment involving 300 Italian citizens used a questionnaire to test whether it may work the other way around when it comes to politics. This paper investigated whether citizens might use mere exposure to information on a foreign issue as a heuristic to express an opinion on a similar issue at the domestic level. Furthermore, it strived to test whether this occurs more frequently when the individual considers the two cultures involved to be relatively close to each other. Results show data can only partially confirm the expectations.
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