Understanding African American environment concern: does race play a role?

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to better understand what factors shape African Americans' environmental attitudes. The research topic stems from a questionable assumption that African Americans view the environment as a lower priority concern. Researchers over the last thirty years have been interested in studying what is called the social basis of concern for environmental quality. The objective of this analysis is to investigate whether racial differences can explain expressions of several environmental attitudes more than other socio-demographic differences. The data for this research comes from the 2010 General Social Survey (GSS) dataset. The results showed that African Americans, as a whole, do not have vastly different opinions about environmental concern than whites. However, major differences were observed amongst the subcategories. Interestingly, some African American subpopulations did not appear to express higher levels of environmental concern, contrary to prior research and common assumptions. Targeted subpopulation research will be needed.