Should I be bothered or not? Development of the Environmental Attitudes Scale (EAS)

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to develop a reliable scale evaluating values, beliefs, and attitudes towards the environment, and to test its basic psychometric properties relative to its employment in Serbia. The final sample included 1020 participants (46.9% male and 53.1% female), aged from 18 to 86 (M = 39.29, SD = 15.77). All the participants completed the demographic questionnaire (age, sex, region, education, work, and economic status), and the EAS scale. This final scale included 34 items grouped into seven dimensions explaining 51.84% of the common variance: Love of nature 18.72%, Population growth policies 10.24%, Pro-environmental behaviours 8.94%, Preservation measures 4.28%, Environmental concern 3.87%, Instrumentalism 3.12%, and Environmental activism with 2.27% of the variance explained. EAS showed internal consistency ranging from .74 to .82 for the factor scales, and test-retest rtt = .80. Results confirmed three second-order factors (84.17% of variance explained): Pro-environmental factor (explaining 46.11% of the variance), contained the Love of nature, Environment concern, Pro-environmental behaviour, Environmental activism, and Preservation measures factors, the second contained only Population growth policies factor, explaining 25.19% of the variance, while the third contained the Instrumentalism factor, explaining 12.87% of the variance.