Attitudinal and Conflict Perspectives on Environmental Issues

Abstract

<p> Environmental quality has become an important political and social issue in recent years. This paper focuses on community attitudes toward the natural environment and their role in engendering conflict over such issues. It is argued that environmental conflict originates from variations in environmental attitudes and philosophies. A conceptual model of environmental conflict is developed. The model includes five fundamental elements. These are: (i) community evaluations of environmentally disruptive actions, (ii) individual and group strategies adopted in light of these evaluations, (iii) reactions of official agencies (public or private) to community involvement, (iv) resultant outcomes and (v) the effect of these outcomes on subsequent issues. As an empirical example of environmental conflict, the proposal to build an expressway through the Red Hill Creek Valley is used to assess the validity of the model. The findings indicate that attitudinal and conflict perspectives have much to offer concerning the analysis of environmental issues.</p>