The Influence of Culture on Pro-Environmental Activities: Comparing English, French and Italian Canadians

The author examines the behaviors of English, French and Italian Montrealers towards the environment. Given the bi-cultural environment of the city, Italian Canadians in her sample were divided into three groups: strong Italians, Italians acculturated toward the English culture, and Italians acculturated toward the French culture. In order to achieve the goal of her study, the three ethnic groups (studied in two separate groups: English/English Italians/strong Italians, and French/French Italians/strong Italians) were compared on several variables, namely, attitudes, behaviors, environmental knowledge, values, individualism/collectivism and demographics. The author's results indicate that although the English Montrealers held more positive environmental attitudes and had higher level of environmental knowledge than Italian Montrealers, they did not exhibit any environmental friendly behaviors except that they purchased less environmentally unfriendly products. Similar patterns were found for French Montrealers and the opposite result was found for Italian Montrealers. When the author looked at acculturation, English Italians and French Italians were found acculturated toward the two dominant cultures on most of the variables studied. Strong Italians in her sample were found to be the most collectivists. She also found that French Montrealers were more individualists than English Montrealers. In line with this finding, a much higher percentage of French Montrealers placed less importance on terminal and instrumental values, which are more likely to be held by a collectivist person.

Master's Thesis

Concordia University

Montreal

2001

vi-143p.

en