Ezra Markowitz

How Will I Be Remembered? Conserving the Environment for the Sake of One’s Legacy:

Long time horizons and social distance are viewed as key psychological barriers to proenvironmental action, particularly regarding climate change. We suggest that these challenges can be turned into opportunities by making salient long-term goals and motives, thus shifting preferences between the present self and future others. We tested whether individuals’ motivation to leave a positive legacy can be leveraged to increase engagement with climate change and other environmental problems. In a pilot study, we found that individual differences in legacy motivation were positively associated with proenvironmental behaviors and intentions. In a subsequent experiment, we demonstrated that priming legacy motives increased donations to an environmental charity, proenvironmental intentions, and climate-change beliefs. Domain-general legacy motives represent a previously understudied and powerful mechanism for promoting proenvironmental behavior.

Expertise in an Age of Polarization Evaluating Scientists’ Political Awareness and Communication Behaviors

During the George W. Bush administration, intense debate focused on the administration’s interference with the work of government scientists. In this study, analyzing a May/June 2009 survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), we evaluate the factors during this period that influenced scientists’ awareness of political interference and their media outreach and communication activities. Controlling for demographic and professional-level influences, those members who were more liberal in their political outlook, who were frequent blog readers, and who felt strongly about global warming were substantially more likely to have heard “a lot” about political interference. However, neither ideology, partisanship, nor opinion-intensity were predictive of the various media and communication behaviors assessed. Instead, the strongest predictor was the belief that media coverage was important for an individual’s career advancement. Implications for evaluating the expert community’s participation in future political debates are discussed.

The influence of anticipated pride and guilt on pro-environmental decision making

The present research explores the relationship between anticipated emotions and pro-environmental decision making comparing two differently valenced emotions: anticipated pride and guilt. In an experimental design, we examined the causal effects of anticipated pride versus guilt on pro-environmental decision making and behavioral intentions by making anticipated emotions (i.e. pride and guilt) salient just prior to asking participants to make a series of environmental decisions. We find evidence that anticipating one’s positive future emotional state from green action just prior to making an environmental decision leads to higher pro-environmental behavioral intentions compared to anticipating one’s negative emotional state from inaction. This finding suggests a rethinking in the domain of environmental and climate change messaging, which has traditionally favored inducing negative emotions such as guilt to promote pro-environmental action. Furthermore, exploratory results comparing anticipated pride and guilt inductions to baseline behavior point toward a reactance eliciting effect of anticipated guilt.

Integrating Parental Attitudes in Research on Children's Active School Commuting

Current active research on school travel emphasizes travel distance and neighborhood walkability as major environmental conditions affecting the occurrences of children walking or biking to school. The impacts of parental travel attitudes on childrens school travel behavior remain understudied. This paper outlines a conceptual framework that incorporates the relationships of attitudes, environment conditions, and childrens walking or biking to school. The framework recognizes the predictive power that attitudinal factors have for childrens walking or biking to school; the framework also highlights the moderating effects of parental travel attitudes on the predictive power of some environment conditions. By using data (1,197 cases) from a school travel survey conducted in a midsized school district in Oregon, this paper reports that parental attitudes toward walking or biking to school and car use are significant explanatory variables in models predicting occurrence of children walking or biking to school when the models control for important environmental variables. The analysis also reveals that important built environment variables—travel distance to school and neighborhood walkability—exhibit varying levels of impacts on the probability of children walking or biking to school when parents demonstrate different attitudes toward active school commuting and car use. The paper discusses implications of the research findings for the challenges facing Safe Routes to School Programs and explores approaches that can make these programs more effective.

What's That Buzzing Noise? Public Opinion on the Use of Drones for Conservation Science

There is rapidly growing interest among scientists and practitioners in using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to gather ecological data crucial for the effective conservation and management of natural resources. Public acceptance and support of drone use for conservation will play an important role in shaping the local-level regulatory landscape in the near future, either promoting or derailing the use of drones for this purpose. Here, we report the findings of the first public polling conducted on the use of drones for conservation efforts. We find moderate to strong public support for using drones for conservation among Americans but differing levels of support for other domestic uses. Demographic factors are not predictive of public support; rather, positive beliefs about science and egalitarian worldviews are associated with increasing support. The results highlight the importance of proactively engaging the public on this issue and avoiding antagonistic messages or cues that may activate ideologically driven opposition.