Knight Center Research Director Bruno Takahashi and doctoral students Ran Duan and Tony Van Witsen, recently published the study “Revisiting environmental citizenship: The role of information capital and media use” in the journal Environment & Behavior.

The study examines the contextual and individual factors that influence environmental citizenship across nations. The results show that  at the individual level,  media use,  environmental concern,  and postmaterialism positively predict environmental citizenship.

At the country level, the study found  a stronger media effect in countries with less developed media systems, a finding opposite to the original assumption made by the researchers. The researchers surmise that this could be because less developed media systems are more centralized.

That could lead to more powerful agenda setting, including environmental agendas. It is also possible that more developed media systems promote consumerism more widely, as opposed to environmental messages.

The study was co-authored by Edson Tandoc Jr., assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.