Domingues, R.B., Gonçalves, G.
Most environmental problems are caused and/or enhanced by human behaviour; thus, it is crucial to understand environmental attitudes that underlie individual’s behaviour towards the environment. In Portugal, a highly vulnerable region to environmental change and serious local-scale natural hazards, environmental attitudes have never been systematically addressed. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to evaluate environmental attitudes in a Portuguese sample using the most appropriate short version of Milfont & Duckitt’s Environmental Attitudes Inventory (Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(1) 80–94, 2010). Reliability and validity analyses showed that the 36-item version of the Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI-36) was more adequate than the 24-item version. Using EAI-36, preservation and utilisation emerged as orthogonal dimensions, forming the vertical structure of environmental attitudes, and were negatively and moderately correlated in the Portuguese sample, expressing an ecocentric viewpoint. Mean scores for the first- and second-order factors were similar to values from other developed countries. Differences in age, gender and study area were found, with older participants, women and individuals from the natural sciences showing higher levels on preservation and lower on utilisation.
