Imagining a sustainable world: Measuring cognitive alternatives to the environmental status quo

Abstract

We build on social identity models of environmental collective action by considering the role of people's access to cognitive alternatives to the environmental status quo. We developed a new measure of cognitive alternatives to the environmental status quo, and examined its ability to predict environmental activist identification and willingness to engage in environmental activism. In Study 1 (N = 386), we developed the initial scale, and found evidence for its reliability and validity. The ability to imagine cognitive alternatives was associated with other relevant social identity and environmental variables including perceived legitimacy of the current environmental status quo, pro-environmental consumer and activist behavior, and beliefs in anthropogenic climate change. In Study 2 (N = 393), we confirmed the factor structure of the scale and found that it was a strong predictor of environmental activist identification, explaining variance beyond extensive control variables including identification with nature. It also explained additional variance in willingness to engage in activist behavior beyond even environmental activist identification. Our results suggest that the ability to imagine cognitive alternatives to the environmental status quo might have important implications for whether people engage in pro-environmental collection action to mitigate climate-change and other environmental problems.

Access to Environmental Cognitive Alternatives Predicts Pro-Environmental Activist Behavior

“…Within the environmental status quo, cognitive alternatives can take several forms and involve multiple intergroup relations. A detailed account of cognitive alternatives within the environmental context is given in Wright et al (2020). At a basic level, environmental cognitive alternatives reflect a vision of how the status relations between humans and the rest of nature could be different.…”

“…Even in non-environmental contexts, cognitive alternatives have rarely been measured and when they have, this has involved ad hoc measures (e.g., Zhang et al, 2013). To fill this gap in measurement, Wright et al (2020) introduced the Environmental Cognitive Alternatives Scale (ECAS).…”

“…How can these collective acts be explained, and how can further collective action in support of proenvironmental initiatives be promoted? Wright et al (2020) proposed that engagement in environmental collective action would be more likely for people who can clearly imagine what a sustainable world would be like. Drawing on the concept of "cognitive alternatives to the status quo" from Social Identity Theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), Wright et al (2020) developed the Environmental Cognitive Alternatives Scale (ECAS) to measure the ability to imagine "a change in the status relations between humans and the rest of nature, with humans living in harmony with the rest of nature, rather than attempting to dominate nature" (p. 2).…”

“…Wright et al (2020) proposed that engagement in environmental collective action would be more likely for people who can clearly imagine what a sustainable world would be like. Drawing on the concept of "cognitive alternatives to the status quo" from Social Identity Theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), Wright et al (2020) developed the Environmental Cognitive Alternatives Scale (ECAS) to measure the ability to imagine "a change in the status relations between humans and the rest of nature, with humans living in harmony with the rest of nature, rather than attempting to dominate nature" (p. 2). In two studies, they demonstrated that being able to imagine what a sustainable world would be like is associated with self-reported pro-environmental behavior and self-reported willingness to engage in pro-environmental collective action in the future.…”

“…In the present study, our purposes are threefold. First, we attempt to replicate and extend the analyses reported by Wright et al (2020) to see if the ECAS is associated with pro-environmental collective action when extensively controlling for additional theoretical variables that help explain variability in pro-environmental behavior. In this way we more rigorously examine the potential explanatory power of cognitive alternatives in predicting environmental collective action.…”