Attitudes Towards Having Children in View of Climate Change

Musialczyk, Ewa (2020) Attitudes Towards Having Children in View of Climate Change. Undergraduate thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

A small yet growing body of literature links environmental concern with lower fertility intentions. A better understanding of how pro-environmental attitudes impact fertility rates might be a crucial contribution to research on the impacts and mitigation of climate change. However, the impact of factual knowledge as a cognitive pre-requisite to affective pro-environmental attitude and its impact on intentions towards childbearing remains understudied. Here, the factual knowledge of what impacts climate change and environmental concern (NEP; Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig & Jones, 2000) are used as predictors for reproductive attitudes (RAS; Arnocky, Dupuis & Stroink, 2012). The study used a cross-sectional design and delivered an internet-based survey to 135 Irish adults. Results of hierarchical multiple regression show that when controlling for effects of age and gender, knowledge of climate change was a weak predictor (β = -.23, p < .05) that lost its significance in the final step. The final model explained 24% of variance and was significant (p < .001) with environmental concern being the sole significant predictor (β = -.38, p < .01). These results suggest that the affective component of attitude towards climate change might have a bigger impact of fertility decisions than the cognitive.

Item Type:	Thesis (Undergraduate)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > Psychology H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences > Environment
Divisions:	School of Business > BA (Honours) in Psychology
Depositing User:	Mr Kevin Loughran
Date Deposited:	24 May 2021 10:12
Last Modified:	24 May 2021 10:12
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/4828

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