Mid Sweden University

Introduction: Sport and outdoor activities have benefits on people’s health and well-being but may also increase the frequency of unsustainable behaviors. The present study explores drivers of travel mode choice and consumption of material (clothes and equipment) associated with physical activity to clarify the extent to which an active and sustainable lifestyle is compatible. The role of identity and varying levels of internalized motivation for pro-environmental behaviors (autonomous and controlled environmental motivation) and engagement in physical activity (autonomous and controlled activity motivation) was examined. In addition, socio-demographic, physical context, and life situation correlates of environmentally significant behaviors associated with physical activity were analyzed.

Methods: A survey of a random sample of the general public in Sweden (n = 1013) was conducted.

Results: After controlling for hours of physical activity, the study showed that environmental self-identity was related to a lower likelihood of using the car alone via autonomous environmental motivation and to a higher likelihood of buying and selling used material via controlled environmental motivation. Physical activity drivers displayed diverse impacts on environmentally significant behaviors, e.g., athlete identity was associated with a higher likelihood of using the car alone and buying new material, but also selling used material. Being a member of a sport or outdoor organization was related to a higher likelihood of using the car alone and buying new material, but also using active travel modes as well as buying and selling used material.

Discussion: With a better understanding of the drivers of environmentally significant behaviors in this domain, strategies to encourage sustainable transport and circular flows of material in sports and outdoors can be outlined.

The mining industries of Sweden and Finland currently face several policy issues around investment, stakeholder involvement,and sustainability. Since the two countries garnered significant attention during the mining boom, research from a social sciencesperspective grew significantly. One approach to understanding how these issues in Sweden and Finland compare to internationalexamples is through an analysis of the policy development framework. Looking at three factors—institutions, actors, andprocess—gives a broad overview of the imminent challenges in both Sweden and Finland and potential lessons from existingresearch that point to similar problems and their solutions. As the mining operations continue to sit at the center of differentvalues, capable policy is required.

Previous research shows that public perceptions of climate change risk are strongly related to the individual willingness to support climate mitigation and adaptation policy. In this article, I investigate how public perceptions of climate change risk are affected by communications from political parties and the degree of polarization among them. Specifically, using survey data from Sweden, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand, I study the relationship between party source cues, perceived polarization, and public perceptions of climate change risk. The results reveal a positive relationship between party cues and perceptions of climate change risk, indicating that individuals adjust their risk perceptions to align with their party preference. Furthermore, a negative relationship between perceived polarization and individual risk perceptions is also discovered, showing that individuals tend to be less concerned with climate change the more polarization they perceive. However, the effect of perceived polarization is found to be limited to more abstract perceptions of risk, while being unrelated to perceptions of concrete risks. Even with some contextual variance, the results generally hold up well across the four countries. 

ObjectiveThis article explores how different motives affect behavior, and attempts to explain how the causal chain of values and beliefs forms our understanding of and motives for private-sphere environmentally significant behaviors (ESBs). As a point of departure, we postulate that traditional models focusing primarily on individual-level motivation as a driver for ESB should benefit significantly from making a distinction in the dependent variable between: (1) behaviors that are explicitly pro-environmental, judging both by their outcomes and the individual’s stated motives for undertaking them; (2) behaviors that have a positive environmental impact but that are connected to motives other than environmental ones; as well as (3) behaviors where both environmental and other motives coincide as drivers for ESB.MethodsIn order to answer our research questions, we use survey data collected from a random sample from the Swedish population register. The main dependent variable is the self-reported frequency of 12 different kinds of nonactivist, private-sphere behaviors. We employ ordinary least square regressions to analyze the explanatory strength of individual-level motivational factors for ESB when taking stated motives for behavior into account.Results and ConclusionThe results support our main assumption that to explain drivers for ESB, stated motives should be taken into account. For all of the 12 ESBs in the survey, a considerable share of the respondents do not perceive or motivate behavior as pro-environmentalism at all, and others provide multiple motives for their behavior, combining, for example, economic or health with environmentalism. Furthermore, when analyzing the relationship between a scientifically well-established model aspiring to explain pro-environmental behavior, and individuals’ behavioral perceptions and their stated behavior, we find that the explanatory power of this model is clearly sensitive to people’s stated motives.

Mining has a substantial influence on several parts of society, in part by providing economic and social development, but also through negative environmental and social-cultural impacts connected to its operation. This combination of both positive and negative effects induces a complex planning and permitting process concerning large and differentiated values, long time spans and large numbers of actors. The aim of this report is to conduct a survey of previous research on societal aspects on mines and mining conducted within political science in particular (and within a broader spectrum of other social sciences in general). The emphasis of the study is placed on identifying research focusing on how, and to what extent, political and institutional factors affect processes of mining development and subsequent serve to shape their outcomes. Results show that previous research has focused on the distribution of rights and resources in connection to development. Five main sub-categories are identified: national mining policies, indigenous rights, corporate social responsibility, company-community conflicts and environmental impacts. Research on how the development processes is impacted by the influence of e.g. public opinion and stakeholder core values, of interactions within the administrative system and of national and subnational policies has though largely been overlooked.