اندازه گیری مقدار که زیربنای توسعه پایدار: توسعه یک مقیاس معتبر

The United Nations General Assembly recognized the importance of people’s sustainability values in driving attitudes and behaviors towards the sustainable development of globalization by declaring a set of “certain fundamental values to be essential to international relations in the twenty-first century” (UN, 2000). The specific values underlying this UN declaration are freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. Despite their importance, little is known about the nature of sustainability values and much work needs to be done in developing such scales. This study develops a reliable and valid measure of values underlying sustainable development which will hopefully stimulate further research on regional, cultural, and demographic differences in sustainable development.

Sustainable development is important. Sustainable development preserves the beauty of nature (Parris & Kates, 2003), nature as a source of resources and service to support life (Costanza et al., 1997 and Zedler and Kercher, 2005), and/or communities (Etzioni, 1996 and Margalit and Halbertal, 2004) while also developing economic (Conger and Donnellan, 2007 and Oakes and Rossi, 2003) and/or non-economic gains (Parris & Kates, 2003) for specific people or society as a whole (Narayan & Petesch, 2002). Sustainable development refers to the “ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987). Recently we have gained a deeper understanding of how humans value nature and its ecological functions (Azqueta and Sotelsek, 2007, Hamilton, 2002 and Swinton et al., 2007) as well as other quality of life attributes (Abdallah, Thompson, & Marks, 2008). This understanding helps explain people’s strategic actions (Prato and Herath, 2007 and Wheeler, 2008), conservation attitudes (Bonaiuto et al., 2002, Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Gowdy, 2007 and Owen and Videras, 2006), and willingness to accept sustainable development efforts (Loomes, 2006, Shaikh et al., 2007, Spash, 2002 and Thøgersen and Ölander, 2002). However, it appears that in order to achieve sustainable development there needs to be a change in human values (a difficult task), which in turn help individuals to define and direct their goals, frame their attitudes, and provide a basis for assessing the actions of individuals, organizations, and societies (Leiserowitz et al., 2006 and Saifi and Drake, 2008). In general, values refer to beliefs pertaining to desirable end states that guide selection or evaluation of behavior, people, and events, and are ordered by relative importance (Schwartz, 1994). Specific to sustainable development, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the importance of changing people’s sustainability values to drive attitudes and behaviors towards the sustainable development of globalization by declaring a set of “certain fundamental values to be essential to international relations in the twenty-first century” (UN, 2000). These sustainable development values are essential to international relations in the 21st century because they will likely guide policy decisions (by international bodies and national governments), organizational actions, and customer and user behaviors, which subsequently impact the quality of people’s lives throughout the world and the preservation of the social and natural environment. The specific values underlying The Millennium Declaration of the UN are freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. Despite their importance, little is known about the nature of sustainability values and the extent to which they help or hinder sustainable development (Mabogunje, 2004). For example, in reviewing surveys of global sustainability, Leiserowitz et al. (2006, p. 441) concluded that “surveys measured a different part of the ‘sustainability elephant’ and none had sustainable development as their primary research focus” and that much work needs to be done in developing multiple scales to understand the psychology of this important topic. More generally, Loomis and Rosenberger (2006) recommended that advancement in ecological economics requires “original research surveys be developed” and made available. This study presents an initial effort to create a reliable and valid measure of values underlying sustainable development and hopefully stimulate further survey work in this area. In the following sections, we develop a scale for each of the fundamental values underlying sustainable development. These measures have valid psychometric properties and provide a solid foundation for future research on the psychology underlying ecological economics.

Research on sustainable development highlights the importance of values in understanding people’s attitudes and behaviors towards sustainable development and while current survey instruments have provided an important first step towards building knowledge on this topic, there is a need for multiple scales to measure the values that underlie sustainable development (Leiserowitz et al., 2006). This study was conducted to develop measures of the fundamental values that underlie sustainable development, as described in the “environmental” and “sustainability” literatures. The resulting scales measure six sustainable development values: freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. The scales are reliable and demonstrate validity. The measures of SDVs presented here represent an important stepping stone for future research. We offer the following examples as only an illustration of the many future opportunities. First, research can continue to investigate the influence of regional factors and changes in society on sustainable development by investigating regional and societal influences on people’s values towards freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. For example, the SDV scales can be used to empirically test whether values differ across geographical regions and cultures and/or across different segments of society. Although the people of one region (or nation) might score higher on the SDV than the people of a higher region, it would be particularly interesting to find differences in the emphasis placed on specific SDVs across regions, such that, for example, the people of one country emphasizes freedom and equality and another emphasizes respect for nature and shared responsibility. How do these differences influence their attitudes, willingness to accept, and behaviors towards specific sustainable development issues? What are the implications for policy makers in these two countries? Second, generally we know that values influence attitudes and behaviors (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1972, Spash, 2002 and Thøgersen and Ölander, 2002). What attitudes and behaviors arise from SDVs? How and why do attitudes differ across SDVs? How does this influences people’s sustainable development behaviors? We hope that this study spurs the development of valid scales for measuring sustainable development attitudes and perhaps also sustainable development behaviors. We believe that the SDV scale presented here can be used in conjunction with studies of environmental psychology and ecological economics using multiple decision criteria methods (Poortinga et al., 2003, Ready et al., 2006 and Sell et al., 2006), multiple attribute utility theory (Ananda and Herath, 2005 and Moxnes, 2004), and other preference revealing surveys (Caplan et al., 2007; Kniivilä, 2006 and Spash, 2002) to help explain variance in decision policies, utilities, and preferences based on their SDVs. Third, under what circumstances do the SDVs come into conflict with each other? That is, why do some situations mean that in order to behave consistent with one SDV an individual might have to “sacrifice” another SDV? Research on these potential trade-offs is important (Breffle and Rowe, 2002 and Caplan et al., 2007) because it highlights the nuances of sustainable development; rather than a simple dichotomous characterization (e.g., you are for it or you are against it). Investigating trade-offs highlights potential conflicts, barriers to certain sustainable development actions, and perhaps through this better understanding more appropriate solutions can be formulated and implemented. Finally, we also hope that our work will trigger more research towards building a deeper understanding of why some individuals act on opportunities that both sustain and develop. Do these entrepreneurs differ in their SDVs than entrepreneurs who are motivated to exploit opportunities solely for personal profits? Can regional variance in SDVs explain regional variation in the generation of new technologies that sustain and develop and their social, economic, and ecological impact (Small & Jollands, 2006)? It is important that we develop a deeper understanding of why there is more or less sustainable development in different regions of the world and why sustainable development takes different forms in different parts of the world. We believe (hope) our measure is an important step (albeit a small one) to this increased understanding.