Childhood trauma and other formative life experiences predict environmental engagement

Abstract

Environmental problems continue to intensify. Yet, despite scientific consensus on threats such as climate change, broadscale public engagement with the issue is elusive. In this paper, we focus on childhood formative experiences and the extent to which they are correlated with environmental engagement. We consider two forms of environmental engagement: civic engagement, measured in hours per month devoted to an environmental protection cause, and private-sphere green behavior. Past studies about significant life experiences have shown that formative experiences, especially in childhood, correlate with environmentally sensitive attitudes and vocations in later life. However, we know less about the formative life events experienced by contemporary environmentally engaged persons. Looking at a nationally representative sample of American adults (n = 449), we find that childhood trauma predicts both civic engagement and green behavior. We also find that childhood experiences in nature and childhood travel experiences predict green behavior but not civic engagement.

When medical assistance in dying is not a last resort option: survey of the Canadian public

“…We recruited 2140 unique participants using vendor Clou-dResearch's Prime Panels to create a quota sample [23][24][25] The full text of the survey can be found in online supplemental file 1 and is summarised in tables 1-3. The first part of the survey covered the following areas: participants' knowledge about the Canadian MAID law (one question for subjective assessment of one's knowledge level which we refer to as 'subjective knowledge' and five true/false questions which we refer to as 'objective knowledge'), general attitude toward Canadian MAID policy (using a question from a previous Canadian public survey as a validation item 16 and as one of the primary outcome questions), opinion on acceptable circumstances for MAID and MAID for mental illnesses.…”