Environmental concern was measured using a five-point Likert scale (1 = ‘‘strongly disagree,’’ 5 = ‘‘strongly agree’’) with the following items: (1) ‘‘Environmental problems are not affecting my life personally,’’ (2) ‘‘Environmental problems are exaggerated, because in the long
run things balance out,’’ (3) ‘‘I have too many obligations to take an active part in an environmental organization,’’ and (4) ‘‘I can think of many things I’d rather do than work toward improving the environment.’’ To create the measure of environmental concern, we computed a mean score. Because item 3 correlated poorly with the other items, we deleted it from the scale. The Cronbach’s alpha of the remaining items reached .811 (M = 3.67, SD = .99). For
ease of interpretation, we reversed all the items, so that a high
score on the environmental concern scale indicated greater environmental concern.