Environmental Attitudes, Intentions, and Behavior

Abstract

The Department of Defense not only acknowledges the current ramifications of climate change but also recognizes the threat it poses to U.S. national security. The Department of Defense is a major domestic and international organization, and despite the Department’s impact in many areas, including the environment, the relationship between national security and environmental concern has not been studied nearly to the extent it could. Furthermore, no study using data from a large military organization exists that could help the Department of Defense progress toward the sustainability it desires. This dissertation addresses this problem by reviewing the U.S. Army’s greening directives and initiatives and providing a short history of these efforts at the United States Military Academy. It examines how and why attitudes, intentions, and behavior regarding the environment differ among military, both ROTC and West Point cadets, and civilian college students, and whether they view environmental problems to be a threat to our national security. This project has five broad findings of interest. First, the relationship between environmental attitudes and environmental behaviors and intentions remained as predicted and was always strongly significant. Second, ROTC cadets were never significantly different in their survey responses when compared with civilian students, and USMA cadets were rarely different. Third, civilian students’ political views were almost never significantly related to their environmental attitudes, behaviors, or intentions, while military cadets’ political views were always significantly related to lower scores on the environmental attitude scale. Fourth, being a U.S. Military Academy cadet, compared to civilian students, was significantly related to stronger agreement with the statement that the so-called ‘ecological crisis’ facing humankind is a threat to the United States’ national security. Fifth, women were more likely than men to report higher scores on the environmental attitude scale and make a special effort to recycle but also more likely than men to express weaker agreement with the statement that the ecological crisis is a threat to national security. This project has the potential to inform the military’s conservation policies and programs, while the military is uniquely positioned to be an agent of change in the efforts to combat climate change.