Wealth, Post- materialism and Consumers' Pro- environmental Intentions: A Multilevel Analysis across 25 Nations

This research aims to test Inglehart's thesis regarding the relationship between post-materialist values, wealth of nations and environmental intentions as measured by willingness to sacrifice to protect the environment. Due to the hierarchical nature of the data, the study uses multilevel and Bayesian multilevel modeling to cross-culturally test Inglehart's thesis. The results from 25 nations contradict Inglehart's thesis, which claims that environmental intentions are post-material valuesa set of attitudes that develop among wealthy people once the more basic needs have been achieved. The general pattern of the results shows that willingness to sacrifice to protect the environment is a global phenomenon and not unique to the wealthy nations. The findings of this paper highlight the importance of simultaneously assessing individual-level and contextual-level variables in determining environmental intentions across nations. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.