To assess the potential change in public opinion, we compare a
measure of the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale elicited before
and after the Gulf Oil Spill. Originally established by Dunlap and
Van Liere as the New Environmental Paradigm in 1978 (Dunlap and
Van Liere,1978), the NewEcological Paradigm scale has become the
most widely used measure of environmental attitudes across many
fields (Hawcroft and Milfont, 2010; Dunlap, 2008).