Environmental allyship: how trusting the government impacts environmental dispositions

Abstract

In this dissertation, I introduce Environmental Allyship: A new measure to capture pro-environmental dispositions. I use this new measure and analyze its relationship with government trust, also measured in a unique way. I review the environmental literature and introduce new theoretical positions regarding this relationship. Structural equations modeling and several confirmatory factor analyses are used to analyze this relationship between Environmental Allyship and government trust. The data used comes from the 2019 Environmental Disposition Survey (EDS) (N = 2,015). Findings suggest that an individual’s trust in the government has a strong, statistically significant correlation with environmental allyship. Persons are less likely to be environmental allies if they do not trust the government. These findings and their implications are discussed in the concluding portion of this paper.