events unrelated to environmental issues such as 9/11 (e.g.
Sunstein, 2007; Lee and Cameron, 2008). Our study is distinct from
each of these in so far as we examine a general measure of environmental
concern elicited before and after a man-made environmental
disaster.
In this way, we seek to contribute to the literature on attitudinal
change in two important ways. First, our dataset is unique in its
timing and scale. The data are the result of a nation-wide survey
that was implemented in the United States directly before and after
the Gulf Oil Spill, and as such these data allow us to examine
environmental attitude change surrounding a high profile environmental
disaster in a national sample. Few studies have a similar
ability on this scale. Second, whereas the literature to date that
empirically tests the impact of significant events on public opinion
has either 1) focused on changes in attitudes about specific issues
or 2) examined attitudes in the context of natural disasters or disasters
unrelated to the environment, we expand the scope of this
literature by investigating the impact of a man-made environmental
disaster on the public's worldviews about society and the
environment more broadly.