Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

It's Hard To Believe There Are People There, Lily Rose Peña

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Real Men Go Green: Environmentalism, Threatened Masculinity, And Identity Recovery, Gabrielle H. Wilson

WWU Graduate School Collection

Masculinity is a precarious and highly valued social identity. Threatening masculinity leads to a range of compensatory responses to recover manhood, which may also impact men’s engagement in sustainable behaviors. Men might embrace or avoid pro-environmentalism when a masculine or feminine gender identity is signaled. The current research applied processes of gender socialization and identity maintenance to the context of environmentalism across two studies. Overall findings showed that masculinity threats can have varied consequences in sustainable contexts, moderated by men’s level of identification with their gender. Study 1 (N = 208) examined if pro-environmental behaviors acted as a threat …

Wilderness Is Not A Safe Space: How Nature Has Been Used As A Form Of Oppression Towards Black People Throughout American History, Dorothy Irrera

English Honors Theses

This Capstone won Skidmore's Racial Justice Student Award. An analysis of literature, American history, and pop culture, Wilderness Is Not a Safe Space: How Nature Has Been Used as a Form of Oppression Towards Black People Throughout American History uses a sociological lens to approach the inherent relationship between racism and wilderness.

The Role Of Sex: An Analysis Of U.S. Attitudes Toward Climate Change, Chloe Riggs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the intersection of sex, environmental risk perception of climate change, and feminism. More specifically, with a sample size of 8,280 respondents from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2020 Times Series Study, this research examines the relationship between pro-environmental attitudes and sympathy for feminism, controlling for sex, as well as if a measure of sympathy for feminism influences pro-environmental attitudes, controlling for demographic (age, education, race, sex, and income) and political preference (political ideology and party affiliation) variables. Previous literature strongly supports a sex gap in risk perception, a pattern known as the White Male Effect (WME) …

The Future Of Humankind: Comparative Cross-Cultural Study Of Youth Environmental Engagement And Environmental Outcomes, Lyudmyla Tsykalova

All Dissertations

Throughout history, the relationship of humans with nature evolved with culture. Climate change calls for a cultural shift in how we relate to nature and fellow humans, pointing to the need to rethink most human activities. Youth are frequently seen as agents of change. However, the widespread understanding that youth environmental engagement is necessary and brings more sustainable outcomes has almost no supporting empirical evidence. Research is needed to reveal whether youth environmental engagement is related to climate policies and ecological consequences and how this engagement varies across cultures.

Based on data from over 300,000 15-year-olds from 40 countries across …

Online Activism And Real Life Environmentalism, Emily Grace Anderson

Dissertations and Theses

Past and present human activities have created and accelerated an array of environmental catastrophes and various systems in the environment remain under threat as a result of human behavior. In hopes of mitigating environmental consequences, a social movement has arisen to encourage people to behave in ways that are more environmentally sustainable. Research shows that individual behavior choices impact the environment, and this influence can be used to positively affect the environment through engagement in pro-environmental behavior. Like with many other social movements, the internet has been a tool in spreading awareness of a cause and allowing people the opportunity …

Discrepancies Amongst Utc Students' Diets And Their Understanding Of Their Role In Environmental Activism, Claire Reticker

Honors Theses

The present research attempts to analyze why university students claim a love for the outdoors but do not use means of dietary action to protect the environment. Through an extensive analysis of corresponding literature, the effects of gender, age, motivation, barriers, and attitudes are examined as they relate to diet. To obtain data regarding these effects, students enrolled in online or hybrid classes at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) were sent a survey via Google Forms, with 129 students willingly responding. Previous to survey collection and statistical analysis, I hypothesized that if students rated their love of the outdoors …

Moral Circles And Mind Perception Shift Perceptions Of Effective Altruism, Kyle Fiore Law

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Across a re-analysis of an existing dataset (Study 1; N = 96) and a higher-powered new study (Study 2; N = 300), we reveal that moral valuation of environmentalism over humanitarianism predicts less favorable moral judgments of effective altruism (i.e., welfare-maximizing socially distant altruism directed at humans) that is performed at the exclusion of helping animals in need. Furthermore, this relationship is explained by tendencies in mind perception to dehumanize outgroup members and stigmatized humans, rather than tendencies to anthropomorphize animals (Study 2). These findings reveal that granular versus aggregate individual differences in moral circles and mind perception may be …

Gary, Indiana And The Us Steel Corporation: An Examination Of Race, Class, And Environmental Injustice In Early Twentieth Century Urban Planning, Laura Rose Allaben

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Gary, Indiana was widely regarded as one of the most successful and promising industrial American cities of its time. Gary was founded by the United States Steel Corporation to be a "model" industrial city created by a private corporation. Gary is unique in that the city was conceptualized, planned, and constructed by a private entity, with little public or governmental input, for the purpose of serving the US Steel industry. As "groundbreaking" and "innovative" as the urban planning of Gary was supposed to be, conditions of segregation in the city caused by a divide between the premiere steel mills and …

Beyond Jair Bolsonaro: The Making Of Brazil’S Environmental Crisis, Emma E. Sandman

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Crawl Space: Driving Over The Anthropocene In A Jeep, Michael Pesses

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The automobile has long been directly and indirectly connected to human conceptions of nature, yet few studies linger with the act of driving as a practice that contributes to how nature is experienced. I argue that a more nuanced understanding of automobility is necessary for any scholars who study both social practices and environmental sustainability. Following the work of the human geographer Doreen Massey, I explore how relations between humans and non-humans, the social and the natural, ideology and practice work together to produce places specific to space and time. I also argue that American automobility is not simply transportation, …

Aesthetic Education In The Anthropocene, Nathaniel Williams

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This big picture study wrestles with the environmental crisis and the digital revolution, two grand themes of our century. Their grand scale is evident in their global significance, which we can anticipate will only grow in coming decades. Will these collective developments be met in such a way that democracy and individuality can be expanded and preserved? This study contributes to this query, offering a new articulation of aesthetic education that draws on a discourse reaching back to Friedrich Schiller, while incorporating many contemporary theorists. The study suggests that the environmental crisis and the digital revolution are creating a perfect …

Bridging Gaps Between Constituents And Policymakers In Climate Policy In Washington State, Rebecca Dickson

Global Honors Theses

Climate change is one of the preeminent concerns of our time. As nation-states around the world face rising sea levels, pollution, political instability, and a rise of national security concerns due to climate instability, greater international cooperation is needed in order to target and adapt to cross-border issues. However, international political action is often reliant upon a national support for that action, especially when national officials rely on the support of their citizenry, such as in democracies, like the United States.

In order to understand how countries such as the United States make decisions on the domestic and international level, …

Overcoming Disruptions Of Human Adjustment Processes To Ecological Shifts In Revolutionary Burkina Faso 1983-1987: The Inter-Relationship Between Externally Imposed Migration, Coordination Of Ngo Activities, And The Process Of Ecological Renewal Through Land Reform, Robert William Penner

Theses and Dissertations

This paper will explore the Burkinabé revolution and the governmental structure which formed out if it, as an ideological entity with some governing capabilities but not simply a political body as it did not possess the capacities at any time to fully govern the country in terms of the implementation of intended social and economic programs. However, these programs were extremely widespread encompassed swaths of rural society in ways that it had not since the Mossi Empire became centralized and rose to regional prominence in the 18th century. The ideological identity of the revolution in Burkina Faso was not a …

Ethical Art Waste: Examining Resource Management In The Art Studio, Amanda Peavey

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This paper highlights the lack of education about production and disposal of art materials within the field of art therapy. Failure to educate clinicians creates ethical problems when hazardous materials are used in sessions unknowingly. This paper is grounded in environmental studies and chemical management to supplement the art therapy field’s lack of research and commentary. The literature is dedicated to educating the reader about the hazardous nature of materials, issues surrounding regulations of chemicals involved in production, and consumerism in relation to waste processing. The research data was collected from a community engagement project: an educational presentation was offered …

A Child Shall Lead Them: Exploring Discourses Of Efficacy And Climate Change As They Appear In Children's Animated Film, Jason Derry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent climate change discourse has tended to presume scientific knowledge and rational argumentation as the principle factor in convincing peoples and publics toward climate action. However, scholarship across numerous fields reveals myriad other contributing factors in how people think about and respond to this environmental crisis, which leans predominately toward silence and apathy. Alongside this, children are often centered as inheriting a calamity, yet find themselves largely disempowered. From out of this rhetorical milieu I interject by way of a multidisciplinary grounding to examine the predominate framings of efficacy in the context of children, climate change, and environmental discourse. To …

The Green Web: Evaluating Online News Communities And Their Environmentalism, Stian Himberg Roussell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the past news and media were disseminated through channels that were difficult for consumers to communicate with. Now a new form of news dissemination is taking place on the internet where communication between consumers and producers exists. Crowdsourced social media sites, where users elect and vote on articles and comments to represent a topic, are creating new forms of news dissemination, which heavily alters media content, and community discussions. This study was conducted in order to better understand how crowdsourced social media platforms affect users’ perception of environmental topics, issues, and problems. It focuses on the crowdsourced social media …

An Intersectional Perspective On Diversity In Environmental Regulatory Agencies: A Case Study Of Women Of Color And Their Liminal Position Of Identity In South Florida, Leah A. Ramnath

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Diversity statistics from environmental agencies nationwide reveal overall growth and improvement in gender and racial composition of employees. However, although women occupied over half of leadership and staff positions, most were white women. The Regulatory and Economic Resources office, an environmental regulatory agency in south Florida, is exceptional as a majority of their employees are women of color. Although there has been continuous development of diversity initiatives by environmental agencies nationwide, perspectives of how women of color are experiencing the environmental workplace are underrepresented when reporting diversity data.

My study aims to understand the complex role of diversity in environmental …

Connectedness To Nature And Pro-Environmental Behaviour From Early Adolescence To Adulthood: A Comparison Of Urban And Rural Canada, Daniel Anderson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Previous research has demonstrated that emotional connectedness to nature (ECN) is one of the strongest predictors of pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). This study investigated the influence of age, gender and living context on ECN and PEB in two Canadian samples.

Study participants completed an environmental survey, which assessed demographic data as well as their levels of ECN and PEB. Project I, which contained 1251 participants, investigated what group factors (age, urban vs. rural living context, male vs. female) contributed to ECN and PEB, as well as whether ECN mediated the relationship between age and PEB. Project II, which contained 84 adolescents, …

Health Equity Through Spatial Justice: A Critical Phenomenology Of Urban Trail Makers, Arvin Simon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has increasingly demonstrated that race, class and place are powerful predictors of health and social justice. This study was conducted to identify the lived experiences of individuals who were hired and trained as part of a green job program that created trails within a city park in Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington Community. This program has historically hired individuals who were formerly incarcerated, many of whom identify as African American. We explored the personal and social experiences of working in nature to better appreciate the intersections of race, class and environment in an urban community. This current study is based on …

Cooperative And Competitive Priming Impacts Participatory Environmental Action, Daniel Curtin

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Environmental issues are becoming increasingly prominent in today’s psychological research. Some researchers identify cooperation as a possible underlying facilitator of proenvironmental values, or proenvironmentalism. However, previous studies had not directly addressed how manipulating cooperation and competition could influence environmentalism. This study addressed this gap in previous literature by cooperatively, competitively, or neutrally priming participants and comparing their respective environmental attitudes, environmental actions, and environmental identities. 155 participants were recruited from introductory psychology classes at Seton Hall University. Participants were randomly placed into one of three conditions and primed by writing a short passage regarding a significant personal experience acting either …

There Is Water In The World For Us : The Environmental Theories Of Alice Walker., Janae Lewis Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of African-American Environmental thought responds to the ongoing erasure of Black experiences and their perspectives on nature. Mainstream environmentalism maintains a legacy of perceived innocence and incorruptibility towards the land, while Black Environmentalism demonstrates the limitations of that ideology. Limitations include the erasure of history in regards to stealing land from Indigenous people, the brutality of slavery, legalized lynching, forced removal from the land, exploitation in sharecropping, destruction of sacred lands, heavy pollution in urban centers, and harmful environmental policies. For Black and Indigenous peoples, it is impossible to view American soil as innocent. This project surveyed the …

Wild Abandon: Postwar Literature Between Ecology And Authenticity, Alexander F. Menrisky

Theses and Dissertations--English

Wild Abandon traces a literary and cultural history of late twentieth-century appeals to dissolution, the moment at which a text seems to erase its subject’s sense of selfhood in natural environs. I argue that such appeals arose in response to a prominent yet overlooked interaction between discourses of ecology and authenticity following the rise and fall of the American New Left in the 1960s and 70s. This conjunction inspired certain intellectuals and activists to celebrate the ecological concept of interconnectivity as the most authentic basis of subjectivity in political, philosophical, spiritual, and literary writings. As I argue, dissolution represents a …

Drowning In Plenty: Bulk, Waste And Countercultural Revival In The Anthropocene, Olivia Shuang Horwitz

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This senior project examines the potential for the bulk food section in American food stores to reduce both food and packaging waste. I chose to analyze the American supermarket because of its immense influence it has on consumer purchases and its role in society as a place of resource to acquire foodstuffs therefore becoming a necessity for the twenty-first century consumer. The type of bulk my research examines as one solution to these problems is not the bulk buys from big box stores like Costco or Wal-Mart, which retain prepackaged marketing, but rather from the aisles in supermarkets and grocery …

Evolving Environmentalism: Contentious Partnerships And Transformational Relationships Between The Environmental Justice Movement And The Mainstream Environmental Movement, Xaver Chaim Kandler

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Developing Ecological Citizenship: The Role Of Political Agents Using Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model, Teresa Victoria Grabs

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite decades of research on environmental behavior, it is unknown how various political actors aid in the development of ecological citizenship (EC). The purpose of this correlational study was to determine the relationship between environmental worldview (NEP) and willingness to take action (WTTA) among political actors within 5 states: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The overarching research question examined how EC can be increased within the 5-state region by identifying the similarities and differences in NEP and WTTA between state legislators, state partners, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model provided the theoretical framework for the study. …

Interrogating The "And": A Study Of Environmentalism And Disability, Melissa Cabat

Honors Papers

Mainstream environmental activists often draw the correlation between environment and disability as being a matter of public health inequities, including air quality, pollution, and now the aftereffects of fracking. These are important, but they only scratch the surface of the link between these movements. I will discuss the movement of ecodisablism and how climate justice activists with disabilities, including the Crips for Climate Justice movement, have been influenced by climate and disability activism. This research is relevant as the massive baby boomer population ages and risks losing their connection to nature due to inaccessible green spaces. Moreover, discussing disability rights …

Nature, Socio-Spatial Divisions And Connections: An Examination Of El Jardín De Guadalupe, Elizabeth Moreno

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Culture is often discussed in the content of social behavior but, how culture is spatially linked to landscapes is often overlooked. Points of social and cultural reproduction is not only tied to landscapes, but there are constantly challenged as new cultures are introduced into a space. Latino culture in the United States has, and continues to, reshape America’s landscapes. For purpose of this thesis, the reshaping of landscapes will be observed in a community. This project examines the perception that Latinos avoid participation in a community garden. This perception is not entirely true, as there was one Latina participating. As …

The Presence Of Rhetoric: A Content Analysis Of The Estonian American National Council’S Documents From Estonia, 1986-1989, Michael Redlinger

WWU Graduate School Collection

In 1991, Estonia formally gained its independence following years of public protest against the Soviet Union and its policies. In 1987, Soviet plans to expand phosphate mining operations in Estonia were made public on live television. That year, independence advocates began to incorporate the environmental grievances of protesters, who were concerned with severe and increasing industrial pollution, into underground publications and protest speeches. Protests in 1987 helped lead to the cancellation of Soviet plans to expand open-pit phosphate mining operations in the Rakvere area -- an important headwater region in eastern Estonia. The project’s cancellation by the Soviet government marked …

The Ripple Effect: Youth Leadership Development And Influence On Environmental Engagement In The Community, Laine Bourassa

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Youth leadership is a critical factor in creating momentum for a cultural shift in sustainability practices and can be fostered through youth leadership programs. While evidence exists showing youth environmental programs are able to promote program participant leadership, it is not yet known to what degree these participants are able to improve the environmental engagement of members of their social networks. This “ripple effect” is assessed in the current study through the context of the Make-A-Difference (MAD) Youth Sustainability Leadership Program in New Zealand. The program involves a 3-day social gathering (hui) and ongoing support for several following years. The …