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Does religion promote pro-environmental behaviour? A cross-country investigation

ABSTRACT
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ABSTRACT

Religion is one of the most prominent social institutions in the world and is profoundly entangled with day to day activities of the majority of the population. However, the effect of religion on socio-economic and environmental dimensions of development is not yet well explored in literature. Thus, this study aims to investigate the influence of multiple indicators of religion on pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes, and whether its effect varies across different income categories of countries. To this end, we use the World Value Survey data from up to 212,995 respondents across 91 countries collected from 1989 to 2014. The results of the study show that religion induces pro-environmental behaviour. Religion promotes individuals' willingness to contribute money and dampens individuals' protest against contributing for environmental protection. Similarly, religion has a positive effect on ecological donation and participation in the environmental demonstration. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that the effects of some of the religious indicators on stated willingness to contribute for environmental protection are more pronounced in low-income countries than countries in high-income categories. These results highlight the importance of religion on environmental protection and suggest that integrating religion into environmental policies and programs may yield better environmental outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

Religion ecological donation protest behaviour willingness to contribute environmental protection

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

Q50 Q53 Q57 Z12

1. Introduction

Religion is one of the most prominent social institutions in the world. More than 80% of the world population is affiliated with religion (Hackett et al. 2012). Religious values, practices and organizations are profoundly entangled with day-to-day activity of individuals and play a decisive role in shaping their attitudes and behaviour (e.g.Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger 2018; Kirchmaier, Prüfer, and Trautmann 2018; Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016; Niamir-Fuller, Özdemir, and Brinkman 2016; Carvalho, Iyer, and Rubin 2019). However, the role of religion has been marginalized in the formulation of development policies for a long time, particularly after the second world war (Tomalin, Haustein, and Kidy 2019; Ter Haar and Ellis 2006; Tomalin 2018). It is again receiving a great deal of attention from various fields of studies since recently. Economic literature, for example, is exploring the influence of religion on various economic and social dimensions of development such as income and economic growth, labour market participation, innovation, human capital, gender equality and income inequality (e.g.Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger 2018; Carvalho, Iyer, and Rubin 2019; Bénabou, Ticchi, and Vindigni 2015; Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott 2015).

In addition to its influence on socio-economic development, religion may play a vital role in the environmental dimension of development (Gottlieb 2006; Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016; Niamir-Fuller, Özdemir, and Brinkman 2016; Tomalin, Haustein, and Kidy 2019; Tomalin 2018). In some circumstances, religion may even be more effective in shaping individuals' environmental attitudes and behaviour than formal environmental protection mechanisms, particularly in countries where formal institutions for environmental protection are not well developed. One interesting example is a successful intervention by faith-based organizations in Tanzania¹ that helped local anglers to permanently stop dynamite use to catch fish, where an earlier attempt from local conservation organizations and government did not bring about the desired behavioural change (Barclay 2007; Rust 2017). Integrating religion into environmental protection programs can then be vital to address the multitude of environmental challenges that the world is facing today (Niamir-Fuller, Özdemir, and Brinkman 2016). However, in order to design a mechanism to successfully integrate religion into environmental programs, it is of high relevance to understand how religion influences environmental attitudes and behaviour.

Several studies explore the relationship between religion and the environment (see Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016 for a review). One of the seminal works on the link between religion and nature is that of White (1967), where he argued that Christian denominations undermine wildlife conservation by advocating 'human dominion' over the earth. This led to a controversy and further investigations on the relationship between religion and the environment using various methodologies such as historical and anecdotal articles, ethnographic and empirical studies. The findings are mixed: some studies documented that religion promotes environmental concern, some reported religion promotes anti-environmental behaviour, and other studies found no significant effect (see Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016 for a review). A broader analysis on the connection between religion and biodiversity conservation by Mikusiński, Possingham, and Blicharska (2014) indicated that Christian countries tended to have more areas set aside for terrestrial biodiversity than countries of other religious denominations. There are a number of micro-level studies, which reported otherwise. For example, Clements, Xiao, and McCright (2014) found that Christians are less concerned towards the environment than non-Christians and non-religious persons. Other studies also made a comparison among different Christian denominations. For example, it was reported that evangelical Christians have less environmental concern than other Christians (see Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha 2016 for a review). Greeley (1993) also found that Catholics are more likely to make financial support to the environment than protestants but less likely than non-Christians and non-religious persons.

The focus of the previous studies on religion and the environment is almost entirely on the effect of different religious denominations on environmental concern or practice. However, it is not only religious denominations but also how devoted an individual is to a religious denomination that matters for environmental concern. In a study by Taylor, Van Wieren, and Zaleha (2016), it was indicated that individuals with a higher degree of religiosity (the strength with which believers follow religious ideas) are associated with less environmental concern than those who have lower religiosity. However, a study by Greeley (1993) found no correlation between environmental concern and frequency of prayer or church attendance. This indicates that multiple dimensions of religion, such as frequency of practice and religious ideas, may have different effects on environmental attitudes and behaviour. Religion has several dimensions, and its effect could then be manifold. In reviewing the multidimensional effects of religion on socio-economic development, Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger (2018) dis-aggregated religion into four dimensions: religious practice, religious ideas, religious identity, and religious actors and organization. They reported that the direction and strength of the effect of the religious dimensions could be different. For example, religion may have a positive effect on human capital and may foster attitudes beneficial for economic growth (Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger 2018; Mayoral and Esteban 2019; Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott 2015) but religion may discourage innovation (Bénabou, Ticchi, and Vindigni 2015; Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger 2018; Mayoral and Esteban 2019).

The economics angle of the relationship between environment and religion is even hardly covered in environmental and ecological economics studies. To our knowledge, the studies by Greeley (1993) and Owen and Videras (2007) are notable exceptions. Greeley (1993) studied the effect of religion on willingness to spend money on environmental protection using a US national dataset. They found that non-religious, Catholics, doctrinal liberals (those who do not believe in the existence of God and those who consider the Bible as a book of fables) are more likely to make financial support for environmental protection than Christian fundamentalists. The present study differs significantly from Greeley (1993) in a number of respects. First, unlike Greeley (1993) that focused on a single indicator of environmental concern, willingness to spend money on environmental protection, the present study covers a wide range of indicators such as willingness and unwillingness to make a financial contribution to the environment, ecological donation, and participation in the environmental demonstration. Second, the main indicators of religion in Greeley (1993) were religious denomination, belief in God, Biblical literalism, and church attendance. However, the present study includes additional religious indicators such as the importance of God in life, membership in religious organizations, and religious identity. Finally, unlike Greeley (1993) who focused on a single country, the present study relies on a large dataset from the World Value Surveys (WVS) that contains many countries across the globe and across extended time-span.

Owen and Videras (2007) explored the role of religious belief on individuals' willingness to make financial support using data from 14 OECD countries. By characterizing individuals' into systems of religious beliefs using a latent class approach, they find that individuals who are more spiritual are more likely to participate in pro-environmental practices and have a pro-environmental attitudes. The present study differs from Owen and Videras (2007) for the following reasons. In terms of religious indicators, Owen and Videras (2007) primarily focused on a single indicator of religion, i.e. religious belief (believe in God, believe in hell, believe in sin, believe in devil). However, the present study focuses on multiple indicators of religion. In addition, unlike Owen and Videras (2007) who focused on OECD countries, the present study covers many countries from developing, emerging, and developed countries. Moreover, the present study covers various waves from WVS, unlike the study by Owen and Videras (2007) which is based on a single wave of WVS. As we are aware, this study is the first attempt to compare the effect of religion on environmental behaviour by income classification of countries; low-income, lower middle income, upper middle income, and high-income countries. Furthermore, there are, to our knowledge, no studies that address the effect of religion on individuals' ecological donation and participation in an environmental demonstration that was collected in the most recent WVS.

Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of religion on pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes and compare its effect by income groups of countries using WVS data from about 91 countries collected from 1989 to 2014. More specifically, this study examines the influence of religion on (i) donation to ecological organizations, (ii) willingness and unwillingness² to contribute money for environmental protection, (iii) trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, (iv) participation in environmental demonstration. We find that religion stimulates pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes. Specifically, we find that religion promotes both individuals' willingness to contribute and an actual contribution of money towards environmental protection. On the other hand, religion discourages protest against contributing money for environmental protection. Interestingly, while these findings are robust across countries in different income categories, they are more pronounced in low-income countries.

The findings in this study have both academic and policy implications. First, it contributes to the scant academic literature on the link between religion and environmental protection. While Greeley (1993) and Owen and Videras (2007) found suggestive evidence using a dataset from the US and OECD countries, respectively, this study complements these studies by providing globally representative evidence on the role of religion on environmental protection. Second, our empirical findings have important policy implications on whether informal institutions, such as religion, help tackle environmental challenges. Much has been said on the role formal institutions play in protecting the environment and accordingly well embedded into environmental policies and programs. Similarly, we believe that our results stress the importance of integrating religion into the existing policies to bring about the desired change. Some successful attempts, such as the roles of faith-based organizations in Tanzania in permanently stopping dynamite use to catch fish (Barclay 2007; Rust 2017) and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in preserving forests (Abbott 2019) lend support to our findings and suggestions. Of course, the exact approaches on how to integrate religion into existing formal environmental policies and programs deserve further research.

The remaining part of the paper is divided into the following sections. Section 2 thoroughly presents data and variables used in this study. Section 3 describes the empirical strategy adopted in this study. Section 4 presents and discusses the results of this study, and section 5 presents concluding remarks.

2. Data

The data for this study come from the World Value Survey (WVS) (Inglehart et al. 2015).³ The survey covers about 100 countries and represents almost 90 percent of the world's population. The data set comprises six waves of a repeated cross-section. The first wave was conducted between 1981 and 1984, and the subsequent five waves were conducted between 1989–1993, 1994–1998, 1999–2004, 2005–2009, and 2010–2014. During this period, a total of 348,532 individuals were surveyed. The data set contains rich information on individual's socio-economic and demographic characteristics, religion, religious denomination, political preferences, indicators of environmental behaviour and attitudes, etc. The main interest in this study is to uncover the effect of religion on pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes. In this study, we used data from wave 2–6 (from up to 212,995 respondents) since our variables of interest, environmental behaviour and attitudes indicators, were collected only after the second wave. Furthermore, to test whether the effects of religion hold across countries in different income groups, we combined the WVS data with countries' historical income classification data from the World Bank (World Bank 2020).⁴ We next briefly discuss the definitions and measurements of religion and pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes.

2.1. Measuring Pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes

The dependent variable in this study is individuals' pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes. As shown in panel A of Table 1, we use six key measures of pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes. Four of the six indicators are directly related to contributing money for ecological or environmental protection. The first indicator in panel A of Table 1 is based individuals' actual monetary contribution to protect the environment. Respondents were asked the question: During the past two years have you given money to an ecological organization? This is a dummy variable taking a value of 1 if the individual has given money to an ecological organization, 0 otherwise. The other three indicators of environmental concern measure respondents' willingness or unwillingness to contribute money to protect against environmental pollution. Unlike the above measure of pro-environmental behaviour , donation to an ecological organization, these indicators gauge individuals' hypothetical preferences to protect the environment. To be precise, these indicators measure individual's willingness to accept to an increase in taxes and willingness to contribute money to prevent environmental pollution. Respondents were asked to indicate how much they would agree with these statements using a four-point Likert scale, which ranges from 1 to 4 where 1 represents 'strongly agree' and 4 represents 'strongly disagree'. Since three of the six measures of pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes take a binary instead of an ordinal value, for comparison purposes, we used the binary version of these two indicators in our analysis. Thus, these binary variables take a value of 1 if the respondent strongly agree or agree to contribute money, to accept an increase in tax to protect against environmental pollution, 0 otherwise.

Table 1. Variables definitions.

CSV Display Table

On the contrary, another indicator measures respondents' unwillingness or protest to contribute to environmental protection. This is based on individuals' belief on whether or not it is the government's responsibility to reduce environmental pollution. More specifically, respondents were asked to indicate to what extent they would agree with the following statement – The Government should reduce environmental pollution, but it should not cost me any money. This is one of the standard reasons for protest response or not willing to contribute for environmental protection (Bateman et al. 2002; Frey and Pirscher 2019). The answers are coded 1–4, where 1 designates 'strongly agree' and 4 'strongly disagree'. As aforementioned, for comparison purposes, we also used the binary version of this indicator of pro-environmental behaviour taking a value of 1 if the respondent strongly agree or agree to the above statement.

Another component of our pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes is individuals' belief on whether they prioritize environmental protection over economic growth. This measure comes from the answer to the question – Here are two statements people sometimes make when discussing the environment and economic growth. Which of them comes closer to your own point of view?. The answers for this question are – (1) Protecting the environment should be given priority, even if it causes slower economic growth and some loss of jobs (2) Economic growth and creating jobs should be the top priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent (3) Other answer. In our analysis, we exclude the third response as it has little relevance for our study. Besides, for convenience, we recoded the answers so that it takes a value of 1 if the respondent prioritize environmental protection over economic growth, 0 otherwise. The last measure of pro-environmental behaviour is based on an individual's participation in demonstration to protect the environment. To capture this, respondents were asked the following question: During the past two years have you participated in a demonstration for some environmental cause?. This is a binary variable taking a value of 1 if the individual has participated in demonstration for some environmental cause, 0 otherwise.

2.2. Measuring religion

Turning to our key independent variable, we use four measures of religion. Similar measures of individual religion have been used in previous studies (e.g. see Bénabou, Ticchi, and Vindigni 2015). As shown in panel B of Table 1, the first measure of religion, an individual's frequency of attending religious services, is based on the following question – Apart from weddings, funerals and baptisms, about how often do you attend religious services these days? This variable takes on the value ranging from 1 to 8, where 1 refers to more than once a week and 8 never. For ease of interpretation, we renormalized the scales so that larger values correspond to being more religious. Our second measure of religion, the importance of God in respondent's life, is measured on a 10 point scale, where 10 denotes very important and 1 not at all important.

The third measure of religion, respondent's degree of membership in religious organizations, is measured using the following question – …, could you tell me whether you are an active member, an inactive member or not a member of that type of organization?. This variable takes on the value of 1 if the individual is not a member, 2 if an inactive member, and 3 if an active member. The fourth measure of religion is an individual's self-reported religiosity irrespective of whether s/he goes to church or not. Respondents were asked to indicate whether they are a religious person, not a religious person, or an atheist. This variable takes on the value of 1, 2 and 3 if a respondent answers a religious person, not a religious person, or an atheist, respectively.

As has already mentioned, this study acknowledges the multidimensional concept of religion. According to Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger (2018) and other works (e.g. Chuah et al. 2016; De Jong, Faulkner, and Warland 1976; Glock 1962), the multidimensional concept of religion has four dimensions: religious ideas, religious practices, religious actors and organization, and religious identity. Religious idea refers to the doctrines, written and formal norms, and oral traditions. Religious practice refers to direct religious behaviour, such as worshipping, religious attendance, making pilgrimages, fasting, meditating, and constructing temples. Religious actors and organizations refer to formal organizational expressions of religious communities like single groups and religious networks while religious identity refers to the identification of individuals to religious groups. Our conceptualization is closely related to Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger (2018) where the assumption is that these religious dimensions have effects on pro-environmental behaviour through the effects they have on people's willingness and capacity meaning that religion influences individual traits through teachings, prayers, membership, readings of sacred books, etc., which in turn shapes people's pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour. Additionally, the direction and strength of the effect of the dimensions of religion could be different. In this study, we used four specific indicators of religion that correspond to the four dimensions of religion mentioned above. The indicators include the importance of God in life, attending religious services, membership in a religious organization, and the degree of religiosity. However, it is worth noting that these indicators of religion are very related to each other, and thus, multicollinearity could be a challenge during model estimations. Therefore, to address this concern, we separately regress each of the religious indicators or dimensions on each of the outcome (dependent) variables.

2.3. Income group

To further probe the robustness of our results and to test if the effect of religion systematically varies across countries in different income groups, we combined the WVS data with a data from the World Bank⁵ on the historical classification of countries by income groups (World Bank 2020). In general, countries are divided into four income groupings: low-income economies, lower middle-income economies, upper middle-income economies, and high-income economies. Countries were divided into these four income groupings based on gross national income (GNI) per capita, in US dollar using World Bank Atlas method. For example, for the fiscal year 2014, countries were assigned in the low-income economies if the GNI per capita is $<= $ 1, 045$ . For the same fiscal year, countries were assigned in the lower middle-income economies and upper middle-income economies if the GNI per capita is between $1,046 and $4,125 and $4,126 and $12,735, respectively. Countries were also assigned in the high-income economies if the GNI per capita is >$12,735.

2.4. Other control variables

Besides the effect of religion on pro-environmental behaviour , we also control for other individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics in our regression analysis. As shown in panel D of Table 1, we control for an individual's age, gender, marital status, educational level, employment status, and income class. Furthermore, we also control for religious denomination, year and country fixed effects.

3. Empirical strategy

The analysis aims to examine the effect of religion on individuals' pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes in the years 1989–2014. Of the six measures of pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes, three of these (participation in a demonstration for some environmental cause, monetary contribution to an ecological organization and protecting the environment should be given priority over economic growth) take a binary value, and the remaining three (willingness to contribute money, willingness to accept to an increase in tax and individuals propensity-to agree with the statement that the government should reduce environmental pollution) take ordinal values. However, for comparison purpose, we generated binary variables using the three ordinal outcome variables. Interestingly, the ordinal variables take only four values (strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree), which makes generating the binary variables much easier. Further, we also showed that this aggregation does not affect our estimation results.

Given the binary nature of the six indicators of pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes, we estimate the following logit model (Wooldridge 2010): (1) $\begin{aligned} P r (P E B_{i j} = 1) = α + β A t t e n d a n c e_{i j} + γ G o d_{i j} + δ R e l i g i o s i t y_{i j} \\ + ϕ M e m b e r s h i p_{i j} + X_{i j} λ + ε_{i j} \end{aligned} (1)$ (1) where ${P E B}_{i j}$ ⁶ denotes pro-environmental behaviour of individual i in country j. PEB takes on the value of 1 if the respondent has donated money to an ecological organization, 0 otherwise; takes on the value of 1 if the respondent has participated in a demonstration for some environmental cause, 0 otherwise; takes on the value of 1 if the respondent prioritize environmental protection over economic growth, 0 otherwise; takes on the value of 1 if the respondent is willing to contribute money to protect against environmental pollution, 0 otherwise; takes on the value of 1 if the respondent is willing to accept to an increase in tax to protect against environmental pollution, 0 otherwise; and takes on the value of 1 if the respondent is unwilling to contribute money for environmental protection, 0 otherwise. ${A t t e n d a n c e}_{i j}$ , ${G o d}_{i j}$ , ${R e l i g i o s i t y}_{i j}$ , and ${M e m b e r s h i p}_{i j}$ indicate frequency of attending religious services, the importance of God in respondent's life, respondent's degree of religiosity irrespective of attending religious services, and degree of membership in religious organizations, respectively. $X_{i j}$ is a vector of other individual characteristics, religious denomination, year and country fixed effects and $ε_{i}$ is the random error term, and β, γ, δ, and ϕ, measures the effect of religion on PEB. We hypothesize that religion promotes pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes and we thus expect $β > 0$ , $γ > 0$ , $δ > 0$ , and $ϕ > 0$ . However, we expect $β < 0$ , $γ < 0$ , $δ < 0$ , and $ϕ < 0$ on the effect of religion on respondent's protest behaviour . Put differently, we hypothesize that religion discourages protest behaviour or unwillingness to contribute money to environmental protection.

To test if religion has a differential effect on pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes across countries with different level income group, we categorized countries into income groups (low income, lower middle income, upper middle income, and high income) using data from the World Bank. We estimate the following naïve logit model, which resemble Equation (1) but distinguish between income groups: $\begin{aligned} P r (P E B_{i j k} = 1) = α + β A t t e n d a n c e_{i j k} + γ G o d_{i j k} + δ R e l i g i o s i t y_{i j k} \\ + ϕ M e m b e r s h i p_{i j k} + X_{i j k} λ + ε_{i j k} \end{aligned} (2)$ where k represents the income group of country j, taking value of 1, 2, 3, and 4 if the income group of country j is low income, lower middle income, upper middle income, and high income, respectively. Other notations have the same meaning as in Equation (1). The estimation results in Section 4 report marginal effects after Logit coefficients of Equations (1) and (2).

4. Results and discussion

We use four indicators of religion, four indicators of environmental attitudes and two indicators of environmental behaviour to examine the effect of religion on pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes. We estimate 120 regression specifications: 96 regressions across the income groups and 24 specifications for the pooled data. The estimation results will be presented and discussed in the following two subsections.

4.1. Religion and pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes

The estimates in Table 2, columns 1–2 indicate that all the four indicators of religion (church attendance, membership of a religious organization, importance of good and religiosity) have a significant effect on willingness to accept a tax increase and willingness to contribute money for environmental protection. An individual who is a member of religious organization, or who reports a greater importance of God or church attendance is significantly more willing to accept a tax increase or willing to contribute money for environmental protection. The frequency of church attendance increases the likelihood to accept a tax increase and willingness to contribute money by 1.2 and 0.9 percentage points, respectively. Further, an individual who does not identify oneself as a religious person is less likely to accept a tax increase or contribute money for environmental protection than a religious person. Willingness to accept a tax increase and willingness to contribute money are the same except that the questions are framed in willingness to accept (WTA) and willingness to pay (WTP) kind of format, respectively.⁷ Thus, the response and thereby the effects of religion on those pro-environmental indicators are not expected to significantly differ. The similarity in both sign and the magnitude of effects of the religious indicators in Table 2 signals this. Further, the similarity of the estimates can also indicate the robustness of our results.

Table 2. Religion and environmental attitudes and behaviour – pooled data.

Display Table

Table 2, column 4, shows estimates of the four indicators of religion on donation to ecological organization. The estimates indicate that church attendance, membership in a religious organization and being religious person have a significant effect on individuals' donation to ecological organization. An individual who is a member of a religious organization is more likely to donate to ecological organization than a non-member is. Similarly, a person who reports a frequent church attendance is more likely to donate to ecological organization. Moreover, the results show that a non-religious individual is less likely to donate money to ecological organization.

Table 2, column 3 shows that the religious indicators have negative and significant effect on protest response. A person who is a member of a religious organization or who frequently attends church is less likely to protest against contributing money for environmental protection, meaning that a person is less likely to say 'The government should reduce environmental pollution, but it should not cost me any money' in his/her response. Likewise, a person who does not identify oneself with a religion is more likely to protest against contributing money for environmental protection than a religious person. This finding adds a new perspective to the studies on the protest behaviour as previous studies mainly focus on socio-demographic, income and SP design-related variables to uncover the factors that influence protest response (Frey and Pirscher 2019; Meyerhoff and Liebe 2010; Meyerhoff, Morkbak, and Olsen 2014).

Table 2, column 5, shows that individuals who report a frequent church attendance, high importance of God, membership in religious organization have a positive and significant effect on the statement that environmental protection should be prioritized over economic growth. Moreover, some of the indicators of religion have a positive and significant effect on participation in environmental demonstration. However, the importance of God in life has a negative effect on environmental demonstration. The controls in our study such as age, income and education have expected effect on environmental behaviour and attitudes (see Tables A1–A6 in the appendix).

Table 3. Religion on stated willingness to contribute money for the prevention of environmental pollution.

Display Table

Table 4. Religion on protest response and donation to ecological organization.

Display Table

Table 5. Religion on environmental protection vs economic growth and participation in environmental demonstration.

Display Table

In general, our results indicate that the effects of religious indicators on environment are alike. All the four religious indicators have positive and significant effects in almost all the indicators of environmental behaviour and attitudes. The results of our study contrast with a number of studies that claimed religious fundamentalists have less environmental concern than non-religious individuals (Clements, Xiao, and McCright 2014; Shao 2017; Smith and Leiserowitz 2013; Smith, Hempel, and MacIlroy 2018; Greeley 1993). Further, our results contrast with Greeley (1993) who found no significant effect of church attendance on willingness to spend money for environmental protection. However, the results of this study are consistent with studies such as that of Peifer, Khalsa, and Howard Ecklund (2016) and Chung et al. (2019) that documented a positive relationship between religion and environmental concern.

Four of the indicators of environmental attitudes and behaviour in our study are directly related to giving money for environmental protection (Table 2, column 1–4). The results of these indicators are thus well in line with the previous studies in philanthropic research that documented a positive influence of religion on charitable giving or donation (see Bekkers and Wiepking 2011 for a review). Multiple studies in charitable giving indicated that individuals who are active members of religious institutions, who frequently attend religious services or who have strong religious belief are more likely to donate to secular or religious institutions (Shepherd, Schnitker, and Greenway 2019; Brown and Ferris 2007; Eger, McDonald, and Wilsker 2014). The possible explanation to the positive link between religion and willingness to give money for environmental protection and donation to ecological organization is that most religious institutions encourage their followers to give money and time through teachings, prayers, and readings of sacred texts.

4.2. Does the effect of religion vary across different income groups?

To explore whether the effect religion on environmental behaviour and attitudes vary across income groups of countries, we estimate the effects of religious indicators on environmental attitudes and behaviour on the four income classification of countries (low, lower middle, upper middle and high income). Particularly, this helps us to (1) test whether the effect of religion holds across income groups of countries; (2) compare the degree of influence of religion across income groups of countries. Tables 3–5 show the estimates for each of the four indicators of religion on environmental attitudes and behaviour by countries income classifications (see the supplementary material for full results). The results indicate that religion has a positive and significant effect on environmental attitudes and behaviour across all income categories and are consistent with the results from the pooled data, Table 2. However, there are a few exceptions. A closer look at the size of the marginal effect estimates shows that the effects of religion on willingness to contribute for environmental protection are relatively higher in low-income countries than high-income countries. For example, a frequent religious attendance increases the likelihood to accept a tax increase for environmental protection by about 1.9 percentage points in low income economies but it only increases by 0.4 percentage points in high income countries (Table 3, columns 5 and 8). Moreover, being a non-religious person decreases the likelihood to contribute for environmental protection by about 9.1 percentage points in low-income countries whereas it decreases by only 2.6 percentages points in high-income countries (Table 3, columns 1 and 4). The results of religious attendance also show a some kind of pattern that the likelihood of willingness to contribute money or accept a tax increase for environmental protection decreases with an increase in income classification (low to high income).

Unlike the effects of religious indicators on stated willingness to contribute money, the magnitudes of the effects on ecological donation are inconclusive; for some indicators, the magnitude of effects are almost the same across different income groups of countries, whereas they are different for some indicators. For instance, religious attendance has almost the same magnitude of effect on ecological donation across all income groups. However, the magnitudes of effects of membership in religious organization on ecological donation are different across income groups.The magnitude of the effect is even lower in low income countries compared to countries in lower middle, upper middle- and high-income categories. All else constant, being an active member of a religious organization increases the likelihood of donating for an ecological organization by 2.0 percentage points in low-income countries whereas it increases by 4.9, 6.7 and 5.2 percentage points in lower middle,upper middle and high-income countries, respectively (Table 4, columns 5 and 8). This may be attributed to: (1) the revealed preference nature of the question. The respondents in low-income countries may tend overstate their willingness to contribute in stated willingness to contribute type of questions than they contribute in practice. (2) the type of donation. The type of donation considered in this study is a donation to an ecological organization, but such types of organizations are not popular in low-income countries.

Moreover, in terms of the significance of the effects, for example, religion has no significant effect on protest response in lower and upper middle-income countries but it has effect in low- and high-income countries. Furthermore, unlike the other indicators of religion, the importance of God in life has a negative and significant effect on the indicators of environmental behaviour (ecological donation and participation in environmental demonstration)in lower and upper middle-income countries whereas it has a positive and significant effect on ecological donation in low-income countries. Table 4, columns 6–7 and Table 5, columns 6–7 show that a person who reports high importance of God to ones life is less likely to donate money to ecological organization and participate in environmental demonstration. This result contrasts our expectation and we do not have a plausible justification for this.

Overall, our findings show that religion has a strong positive effect on pro-environmental behaviour and is almost consistent across all income groups of countries. Therefore, by embedding religion into the environmental policies and programs, religious institutions and leaders may play a crucial role to tackle the multitude of environmental challenges such as global warming, water pollution, and deforestation that the world is facing today. The results of this study also show that the effect of religion on stated willingness to contribute to environmental protection is more pronounced in low-income countries than high-income countries. The possible explanation for the more pronounced effect of religion on willingness to contribute money for environmental protection in low-income categories could be that religious traditions and actors in low-income countries may provide a better social context to encourage generous habits. This can be strengthened by the fact that the majority of the population in low-income economies is affiliated with a religion and thereby it is intertwined with a day to day activities of the people. In addition, in low-income countries, formal institutions for environmental protection, i.e. environmental policy instruments that intend to regulate environmental challenges are nonexistent or not well developed or have low acceptability (Barclay 2007). Therefore, integrating religion into environmental programs may yield a greater outcome in low-income countries.

In some circumstances, religion may even be more effective in shaping individuals' environmental attitudes and behaviour than formal environmental protection mechanisms. One example of this is an intervention by faith-based organizations to stop dynamite use to catch fish in Tanzania. Local anglers were using dynamite to catch fish, which was subsequently destroying, and damaging coral, and killing immature fish. As a solution to this, local conservation organizations tried to educate anglers but they did not listen. Then the government banned the use of dynamite to catch fish but this does not also bring about the intended outcome. The anglers took no notice of the banning. Faith-based organizations Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science (IFEES) intervened through local sheikhs since all the anglers were Muslim. ARC and IFEES members showed the Sheiks passages in the Koran that Islam is pro-environmental and the current practice of the anglers goes against this teaching. The Sheiks included this in their teachings to the anglers ad community and then the anglers stopped using dynamite to catch fish (Barclay 2007; Rust 2017). Thus, religion can be effective and can play a vital role in tackling environmental problems, particularly in low-income countries where formal institutions for environmental protection are either weak or nonexistent. However, detailed mechanisms on how to integrate religion into formal institutions for environmental protection is beyond the scope of the study and requires further investigations.

5. Conclusion

Religion has received less attention in environmental and ecological economics. Thus, in this study, we explore the effect of religion (using multiple indicators) on pro-environmental intention and behaviour with the main emphasis on willingness or unwillingness to contribute money for environmental protection and donation to ecological organization using up to 212,995 observations from about 91 countries from five waves of World Value Survey that covers 1989–2014. The findings of our study show that religion promotes pro-environmental intentions and behaviour. Religious individuals are more willing to contribute money and less likely to protest against contribute money for environmental protection. Similarly, religion has a positive effect on pro-environmental behaviour – ecological donation and participation in environmental demonstration. Furthermore, the results of this study highlight that some indicators of religion have a higher effect on stated willingness to contribute money for environmental protection in low-income countries than high income countries.

The findings in this study are informative and stimulate further research in this area. However, some important caveats remain. First, the findings in this study are based on repeated cross-section data, which constrain our ability to provide causal effects of religion on environmental concerns. Hence, the availability of randomized or panel data would enable to provide more rigour results on the effect of religion on pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes. The other caveat stems from the fact that how the environmental concern was measured. Although most of the measures of pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes are related to giving money to environmental protection, the questions were whether they are willing to give money or have given money meaning that the amount they are willing to give or have given for environmental protection is not measured in WVS. Therefore, the relationship between religion and amount that individuals are willing to pay for the environment is worth exploring in the future.

Notwithstanding these caveats, we showed that our empirical results are robust using a series of robustness checks. In total, we ran about 120 regression specifications. First, we ran 24 regression specifications using four indicators of religion and six indicators of the outcome variable – pro environmental behaviour and attitudes. Interestingly, the four indicators of religion has mostly consistent and robust effects on the six indicators of respondent's environmental concerns. To further probe our estimation results, we also categorized countries into four income groups: low income, lower middle income, upper middle income, and high income, and ran 96 regression specifications. Despite minor differences across income groups, we find that religion indeed positively and significantly affects pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes.

We believe that the findings in this study make two important contributions. First, it contributes to a small but growing body of literature on the link between religion and environmental protection (Owen and Videras 2007; Greeley 1993). Second, the empirical results have direct real-world policy implementations in that it suggests the importance of embedding informal institutions, such as religion, into the existing environmental policies and regulations to improve environmental quality. However, further research is needed on how to integrate religion into the existing formal environmental policies and programs.

Table 1. Variables definitions.

Variables	Descriptions of variables	Values
Panel A -
Pro-environmental behaviour
Ecological donation	Given money to an ecological organization	No = 0, Yes = 1
WTA increase	Willing to accept increase in taxes to prevent environmental pollution	Strongly agree = 1, Agree = 2, Disagree = 3, Strongly disagree = 4
WTC money	Willing to contribute money to prevent environmental pollution	Strongly agree = 1, Agree = 2, Disagree = 3, Strongly disagree = 4
Government should pay	Government should reduce environmental pollution	Strongly agree = 1, Agree = 2, Disagree = 3, Strongly disagree = 4
Environmental protection	Protecting the environment should be given priority over growth	Economy growth = 0, Protecting environment = 1
Environmental demonstration	Participated in a demonstration for some environmental cause	No = 0, Yes = 1
Panel B -
Religious Indicators
Church attendance	Attending religious services	More than once a week = 1,…, Never practically never = 8
God	Importance is God in life	Not at all important = 1,…, Very important = 10,
Membership	Membership in religious organization	Not a member = 0, Inactive member = 1, Active member = 2
Religiosity	Degree of religiosity	A religious person = 1, Not a religious person = 2, A convinced atheist = 3
Panel C -
Income group
Income group	Income classification of countries	Low income, Lower middle income, Upper middle income, High income
Panel D -
Socio-demographic Characteristics
Age	Age of the respondent (years)	Continuous
Sex	Sex of the respondent	Male = 0, Female = 1
Marital status	Marital status of the respondent	Married = 1, Living together as married = 2, Divorced = 3,
		Separated = 4, Widowed = 5, Single/Never married = 6
Children	Number of children in the household	Continuous
Education	Highest educational level attained	Incomplete primary school = 1,…, University-level education, with degree = 8
Employment	Employment status of the respondent	Full time = 1, Part time = 2, Self employed = 3, Retired = 4,
		Housewife = 5, Students = 6, Unemployed = 7, Other = 8
Income class	Income class of the respondent	Lowest income decile = 1,…, Tenth income decile = 10

Table 2. Religion and environmental attitudes and behaviour – pooled data.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
	WTC	WTA	Government	Ecological	Env't protection	Environmental
	money	increase in Tax	should pay	donation	vs Eco Growth	demonstration
Church attendance	0.012***	0.009***	−0.002***	0.006***	0.002***	0.004***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.000)
	86,145	133,843	86,395	74,198	212,350	73,800
	0.087	0.059	0.094	0.098	0.047	0.101
Important of God	0.007***	0.007***	0.001	−0.001	0.004***	−0.001***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.000)	(0.001)	(0.000)
	87,191	133,307	87,446	74,615	212,995	74,169
	0.090	0.061	0.096	0.096	0.047	0.096
Inactive member	0.021***	0.015***	−0.021***	0.032***	0.006*	0.018***
	(0.006)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.003)
Active member	0.060***	0.045***	−0.043***	0.056***	0.024***	0.036***
	(0.006)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.003)
	56,981	105,147	57,218	75,488	173,819	75,103
	0.105	0.068	0.107	0.102	0.048	0.103
Not a religious person	−0.047***	−0.041***	0.018***	−0.011***	−0.019***	−0.002
	(0.005)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.002)
A convinced atheist	−0.072***	−0.042***	0.002	0.006	−0.006	0.010**
	(0.010)	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.005)
	85,619	130,585	85,812	73,922	207,923	73,476
	0.092	0.061	0.100	0.097	0.048	0.096
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Notes. The Table reports Logit estimates of four alternative measures of religious beliefs. The dependent variables in columns (1–6) is a dummy taking a value of 1 if the respondent is willing to contribute money, willing to accept increase in tax, agreed with the statement that the government should reduce environmental pollution, donated money to ecological organization, prioritized environmental protection over economic growth, and participated in environmental demonstration, respectively, 0 otherwise. The table reports marginal effects after Logit coefficients. Robust standard errors in parentheses followed by number of observations and Pseudo $R^{2}$ both in italics. All regression models controls for sex, age, marital status, number of children, education, employment status, and income class. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

Table 3. Religion on stated willingness to contribute money for the prevention of environmental pollution.

	WTC money				WTA increase in tax
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)
	Low	Lower	Upper	High	Low	Lower	Upper	High
	income	middle	middle	income	income	middle	middle	income
		income	income			income	income
Church attendance	0.017***	0.014***	0.009***	0.010***	0.019***	0.009***	0.009***	0.004***
	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.001)
	19,789	21,816	19,159	25,273	27,808	39,994	28,759	37,109
	0.093	0.101	0.075	0.062	0.081	0.068	0.055	0.046
Important of God	0.003**	0.003*	0.006***	0.011***	0.005***	0.008***	0.004***	0.008***
	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.001)
	19,505	22,606	19,092	25,880	27,514	40,508	28,625	36,510
	0.086	0.100	0.075	0.075	0.076	0.069	0.055	0.056
Inactive member	0.036***	−0.001	0.028**	0.018*	0.008	−0.004	0.035***	0.021***
	(0.011)	(0.013)	(0.014)	(0.011)	(0.011)	(0.009)	(0.010)	(0.008)
Active member	0.068***	0.045***	0.064***	0.060***	0.062***	0.005	0.060***	0.046***
	(0.011)	(0.013)	(0.014)	(0.012)	(0.011)	(0.010)	(0.010)	(0.009)
	9,520	15,274	13,685	18,457	17,733	33,793	23,296	30,213
	0.110	0.114	0.077	0.087	0.077	0.075	0.058	0.065
Not a religious person	−0.091***	−0.033***	−0.052***	−0.026***	−0.054***	−0.037***	−0.055***	−0.019***
	(0.011)	(0.010)	(0.011)	(0.008)	(0.010)	(0.007)	(0.009)	(0.007)
A convinced atheist	−0.178***	−0.022	−0.089***	−0.049***	−0.064***	−0.036*	−0.066***	−0.017
	(0.032)	(0.024)	(0.028)	(0.014)	(0.024)	(0.019)	(0.021)	(0.012)
	19,212	23,087	18,851	24,362	26,931	40,437	28,263	34,806
	0.093	0.102	0.076	0.075	0.077	0.070	0.056	0.054
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Notes. The Table reports Logit estimates of four alternative measures of religious beliefs. The dependent variable in columns (1–4) is a dummy taking a value of 1 if the respondent is willing to contribute money to prevent environmental pollution, 0 otherwise. The dependent variable in columns (5–8) is a dummy taking a value of 1 if the respondent is willing to accept increase in tax to prevent environmental pollution, 0 otherwise. The table reports marginal effects after Logit coefficients. Robust standard errors in parentheses followed by number of observations and Pseudo $R^{2}$ both in italics. All regression models controls for sex, age, marital status, number of children, education, employment status, and income class. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

Table 4. Religion on protest response and donation to ecological organization.

	Government should pay				Ecological donation
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)
	Low	Lower	Upper	High	Low	Lower	Upper	High
	income	middle	middle	income	income	middle	middle	income
		income	income			income	income
Church attendance	−0.006***	−0.001	0.001	−0.003	0.006***	0.006***	0.005***	0.007***
	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
	19,729	21,956	19,202	25,403	5,477	15,230	31,577	21,480
	0.077	0.075	0.040	0.103	0.191	0.104	0.057	0.078
Important of God	0.002	−0.002	0.001	−0.001	0.002**	−0.002***	−0.001*	0.001
	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
	19,462	22,744	19,126	26,009	5,474	16,349	31,255	21,104
	0.077	0.095	0.040	0.104	0.180	0.095	0.053	0.075
Inactive member	−0.071***	0.038***	−0.009	−0.040***	−0.001	0.053***	0.031***	0.041***
	(0.017)	(0.010)	(0.011)	(0.011)	(0.005)	(0.013)	(0.006)	(0.008)
Active member	−0.074***	−0.011	−0.016	−0.078***	0.020***	0.049***	0.067***	0.052***
	(0.016)	(0.011)	(0.012)	(0.013)	(0.006)	(0.012)	(0.007)	(0.010)
	9,543	15,351	13,748	18,533	5,478	16,242	31,869	21,465
	0.047	0.131	0.030	0.120	0.183	0.115	0.062	0.078
Not a religious person	0.028**	0.008	0.012	0.025***	−0.006	−0.004	−0.012***	−0.018***
	(0.011)	(0.008)	(0.009)	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.006)	(0.004)	(0.007)
A convinced atheist	0.037*	0.005	0.017	−0.012	−0.015	0.014	0.007	0.010
	(0.021)	(0.016)	(0.021)	(0.013)	(0.012)	(0.025)	(0.010)	(0.011)
	19,147	23,203	18,884	24,474	5,476	16,151	31,083	20,778
	0.076	0.114	0.040	0.108	0.178	0.106	0.053	0.077
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Notes. The Table reports Logit estimates of four alternative measures of religious beliefs. The dependent variable in columns (1–4) is a dummy taking a value of 1 if the respondent agreed with the statement that the government should reduce environmental pollution, 0 otherwise. The dependent variable in columns (5–8) is a dummy taking a value of 1 if the respondent has donated money to ecological organization, 0 otherwise. The table reports marginal effects after Logit coefficients. Robust standard errors in parentheses followed by number of observations and Pseudo $R^{2}$ both in italics. All regression models controls for sex, age, marital status, number of children, education, employment status, and income class. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

Table 5. Religion on environmental protection vs economic growth and participation in environmental demonstration.

	Env't protection vs eco growth				Environmental demonstration
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)
	Low	Lower	Upper	High	Low	Lower	Upper	High
	income	middle	middle	income	income	middle	middle	income
		income	income			income	income
Church attendance	0.004**	0.003***	0.005***	0.003***	0.003***	0.009***	0.004***	0.002***
	(0.002)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
	33,860	59,548	60,657	57,583	5,430	14,998	31,553	21,398
	0.097	0.038	0.046	0.049	0.078	0.120	0.104	0.091
Important of God	0.002*	0.008***	0.005***	0.004***	−0.000	−0.003***	−0.001**	−0.000
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.000)
	34,259	61,079	60,171	56,800	5,428	16,079	31,231	21,011
	0.096	0.037	0.045	0.051	0.074	0.115	0.100	0.088
Inactive member	−0.018*	0.027***	−0.010	0.018***	0.031***	0.035***	0.017***	0.006*
	(0.011)	(0.008)	(0.007)	(0.006)	(0.009)	(0.007)	(0.004)	(0.003)
Active member	−0.005	0.038***	0.003	0.043***	0.025***	0.070***	0.037***	0.016***
	(0.011)	(0.009)	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.005)	(0.004)
	22,751	44,866	54,983	50,977	5,431	16,019	31,847	21,385
	0.096	0.038	0.047	0.052	0.082	0.126	0.106	0.092
Not a religious person	0.001	−0.025***	−0.005	−0.025***	0.001	0.001	−0.004	−0.000
	(0.010)	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.005)	(0.010)	(0.006)	(0.003)	(0.003)
A convinced atheist	−0.060***	−0.001	−0.022	−0.005	−0.019	−0.010	0.012	0.008
	(0.018)	(0.015)	(0.014)	(0.009)	(0.014)	(0.020)	(0.009)	(0.005)
	33,011	59,874	59,539	54,859	5,429	15,890	31,052	20,684
	0.098	0.039	0.045	0.051	0.075	0.112	0.100	0.088
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Notes. The Table reports Logit estimates of four alternative measures of religious beliefs. The dependent variable in columns (1–4) is a dummy taking a value of 1 if the respondent prioritize environmental protection over economic growth, 0 otherwise. The dependent variable in columns (5–8) is a dummy taking a value of 1 if the respondent participated in environmental demonstration, 0 otherwise. The table reports marginal effects after Logit coefficients. Robust standard errors in parentheses followed by number of observations and Pseudo $R^{2}$ both in italics. All regression models controls for sex, age, marital status, number of children, education, employment status, and income class. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

Table A1. Religion and willingness to contribute money.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	WTC money	WTC money	WTC money	WTC money
Church attendance	0.012***
	(0.001)
Important of God		0.007***
		(0.001)
Inactive member			0.021***
			(0.006)
Active member			0.060***
			(0.006)
Not a religious person				−0.047***
				(0.005)
A convinced atheist				−0.072***
				(0.010)
Female	0.000	−0.001	0.006	−0.001
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.005)	(0.004)
Age	−0.000	−0.000	0.001*	−0.000
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Age square	0.000	0.000	−0.000	0.000
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Living together as married	0.006	0.003	0.005	0.003
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.008)	(0.007)
Divorced	−0.008	−0.012	−0.004	−0.014
	(0.009)	(0.009)	(0.011)	(0.010)
Separated	−0.008	−0.013	−0.008	−0.010
	(0.012)	(0.012)	(0.015)	(0.012)
Widowed	−0.042***	−0.042***	−0.048***	−0.044***
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.010)	(0.008)
Single	−0.005	−0.007	−0.006	−0.007
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.007)	(0.005)
Number of children	−0.003**	−0.002*	0.000	−0.002*
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.001)
Highest educational level	0.016***	0.017***	0.018***	0.017***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Part time	0.022***	0.021***	0.019**	0.024***
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.009)	(0.007)
Self employed	0.026***	0.025***	0.020***	0.027***
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.007)	(0.006)
Retired	−0.001	−0.002	0.002	−0.001
	(0.000)	(0.007)	(0.009)	(0.007)
Housewife	0.008	0.005	0.008	0.008
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.008)	(0.006)
Students	0.047***	0.046***	0.055***	0.042***
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.009)	(0.007)
Unemployed	0.001	0.001	−0.004	0.000
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.008)	(0.006)
Other	−0.029**	−0.029**	−0.017	−0.030**
	(0.014)	(0.014)	(0.017)	(0.014)
Income class	0.010***	0.010***	0.014***	0.010***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Observations	86,145	87,191	56,981	85,619
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Table A2. Religion and willingness to accept to increase in tax.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	WTA increase	WTA increase	WTA increase	WTA increase
	in Tax	in Tax	in Tax	in Tax
Church attendance	0.009***
	(0.001)
Important of God		0.007***
		(0.001)
Inactive member			0.015***
			(0.005)
Active member			0.045***
			(0.005)
Not a religious person				−0.041***
				(0.004)
A convinced atheist				−0.042***
				(0.008)
Female	0.006*	0.005	0.012***	0.005
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.004)	(0.003)
Age	−0.002***	−0.002***	−0.002***	−0.002***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Age square	0.000**	0.000***	0.000***	0.000***
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Living together as married	−0.001	−0.003	0.002	−0.002
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.007)	(0.006)
Divorced	−0.015*	−0.017**	−0.007	−0.017**
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.008)
Separated	−0.015	−0.019*	−0.019*	−0.019*
	(0.010)	(0.010)	(0.012)	(0.010)
Widowed	−0.039***	−0.041***	−0.039***	−0.042***
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.007)
Single	−0.005	−0.006	−0.006	−0.006
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Number of children	−0.004***	−0.003***	−0.003***	−0.004***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Highest educational level	0.014***	0.014***	0.014***	0.015***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Part time	0.013**	0.012**	0.010	0.014**
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.006)
Self employed	0.000	−0.002	−0.004	−0.003
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.005)
Retired	−0.017***	−0.019***	−0.016**	−0.018***
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.007)	(0.006)
Housewife	−0.008	−0.010*	−0.010	−0.008
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.005)
Students	0.035***	0.034***	0.032***	0.028***
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.008)	(0.007)
Unemployed	0.000	0.000	0.002	0.001
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.005)
Other	−0.028**	−0.026**	−0.047***	−0.027**
	(0.011)	(0.011)	(0.013)	(0.011)
Income class	0.008***	0.008***	0.011***	0.008***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Observations	133,843	133,307	105,147	130,585
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Table A3. Religion and government's role in environmental protection.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Government	Government	Government	Government
	should pay	should pay	should pay	should pay
Church attendance	−0.002***
	(0.001)
Important of God		0.000
		(0.001)
Inactive member			−0.021***
			(0.006)
Active member			−0.043***
			(0.006)
Not a religious person				0.018***
				(0.004)
A convinced atheist				0.002
				(0.008)
Female	0.010***	0.008**	0.013***	0.010***
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Age	−0.000	−0.000	−0.001	−0.000
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Age square	−0.000	−0.000	0.000	0.000
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Living together as married	0.007	0.007	0.003	0.008
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.008)	(0.007)
Divorced	−0.014	−0.015*	−0.022**	−0.014
	(0.009)	(0.009)	(0.011)	(0.009)
Separated	−0.010	−0.007	−0.027*	−0.009
	(0.012)	(0.012)	(0.015)	(0.012)
Widowed	0.023***	0.021***	0.019**	0.024***
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.009)	(0.008)
Single	−0.001	0.000	0.001	0.003
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.007)	(0.005)
Number of children	0.001	0.001	−0.001	0.001
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.001)
Highest educational level	−0.014***	−0.014***	−0.015***	−0.015***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Part time	−0.011*	−0.010	−0.007	−0.009
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.008)	(0.007)
Self employed	−0.013**	−0.012**	−0.005	−0.011*
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.007)	(0.006)
Retired	0.010	0.011	0.015*	0.012*
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.008)	(0.007)
Housewife	−0.004	−0.003	−0.016**	−0.000
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.008)	(0.006)
Students	−0.037***	−0.037***	−0.032***	−0.031***
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.010)	(0.008)
Unemployed	0.006	0.006	0.000	0.009
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.008)	(0.006)
Other	−0.004	−0.001	0.018	0.001
	(0.012)	(0.011)	(0.013)	(0.011)
Income class	−0.010***	−0.010***	−0.010***	−0.010***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Observations	86,395	87,446	57,218	85,812
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Table A4. Religion and ecological donation.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Ecological	Ecological	Ecological	Ecological
	donation	donation	donation	donation
Church attendance	0.006***
	(0.001)
Important of God		−0.000
		(0.000)
Inactive member			0.032***
			(0.004)
Active member			0.056***
			(0.004)
Not a religious person				−0.011***
				(0.003)
A convinced atheist				0.006
				(0.005)
Female	0.002	0.001	0.001	0.001
	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)
Age	0.001**	0.001**	0.001**	0.001**
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Age square	−0.000	−0.000	−0.000	−0.000
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Living together as married	−0.005	−0.007*	−0.005	−0.007*
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Divorced	0.002	0.000	0.001	0.001
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Separated	−0.003	−0.006	−0.003	−0.005
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.007)
Widowed	−0.008*	−0.008*	−0.008*	−0.007
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Single	−0.002	−0.004	−0.002	−0.003
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Number of children	−0.001	−0.000	−0.001	−0.000
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Highest educational level	0.009***	0.009***	0.009***	0.009***
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Part time	0.005	0.004	0.004	0.004
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Self employed	−0.004	−0.004	−0.003	−0.003
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Retired	−0.013***	−0.012***	−0.012***	−0.012***
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Housewife	−0.024***	−0.026***	−0.024***	−0.025***
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Students	−0.008*	−0.007*	−0.008*	−0.008*
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Unemployed	−0.023***	−0.023***	−0.022***	−0.022***
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.003)	(0.004)
Other	−0.037***	−0.037***	−0.036***	−0.036***
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Income class	0.007***	0.007***	0.007***	0.007***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Observations	74,198	74,615	75,488	73,922
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Table A5. Religion and environmental protection vs economic growth.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Env't Protection	Env't Protection	Env't Protection	Env't Protection
	vs Eco Growth	vs Eco Growth	vs Eco Growth	vs Eco Growth
Church attendance	0.002***
	(0.001)
Important of God		0.004***
		(0.001)
Inactive member			0.006*
			(0.004)
Active member			0.024***
			(0.004)
Not a religious person				−0.019***
				(0.003)
A convinced atheist				−0.006
				(0.006)
Female	0.013***	0.012***	0.018***	0.013***
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Age	0.001**	0.001**	0.002***	0.001**
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.001)	(0.000)
Age square	−0.000***	−0.000***	−0.000***	−0.000***
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Living together as married	−0.006	−0.005	0.000	−0.006
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Divorced	0.008	0.006	0.004	0.003
	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.007)	(0.006)
Separated	−0.003	−0.006	−0.005	−0.006
	(0.009)	(0.009)	(0.010)	(0.009)
Widowed	−0.001	−0.002	−0.002	−0.002
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.005)
Single	0.003	0.005	0.007*	0.004
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Number of children	0.000	0.001	−0.000	0.000
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Highest educational level	0.009***	0.009***	0.010***	0.009***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Part time	0.001	0.001	−0.002	0.002
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Self employed	0.012***	0.010**	0.016***	0.012***
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.005)	(0.004)
Retired	−0.008	−0.009*	−0.008	−0.008
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Housewife	−0.001	−0.003	−0.007	−0.003
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.005)	(0.004)
Students	0.004	0.005	0.005	0.002
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.006)	(0.005)
Unemployed	−0.027***	−0.027***	−0.033***	−0.026***
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.005)	(0.004)
Other	−0.007	0.003	−0.007	−0.000
	(0.008)	(0.008)	(0.009)	(0.008)
Income class	0.003***	0.003***	0.002***	0.003***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Observations	212,350	212,995	173,819	207,923
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Table A6. Religion and participation in environmental demonstration.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Environmental	Environmental	Environmental	Environmental
	demonstration	demonstration	demonstration	demonstration
Church attendance	0.004***
	(0.000)
Important of God		−0.001***
		(0.000)
Inactive member			0.018***
			(0.003)
Active member			0.036***
			(0.003)
Not a religious person				−0.002
				(0.002)
A convinced atheist				0.010**
				(0.005)
Female	−0.003*	−0.003*	−0.003**	−0.003*
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Age	0.001**	0.001***	0.001***	0.001***
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Age square	−0.000***	−0.000***	−0.000***	−0.000***
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Living together as married	0.005*	0.003	0.005*	0.004
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Divorced	0.001	0.001	0.001	0.001
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Separated	0.003	−0.000	0.002	0.000
	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)	(0.005)
Widowed	−0.006	−0.006	−0.006	−0.006
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Single	0.004	0.002	0.004*	0.003
	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)
Number of children	−0.001**	−0.002***	−0.002***	−0.001**
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Highest educational level	0.004***	0.004***	0.004***	0.004***
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Part time	0.009***	0.009***	0.009***	0.009***
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Self employed	−0.001	−0.001	0.000	0.000
	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)
Retired	0.001	0.002	−0.000	0.002
	(0.003)	(0.004)	(0.003)	(0.004)
Housewife	−0.012***	−0.013***	−0.012***	−0.013***
	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)
Students	0.009***	0.010***	0.009***	0.010***
	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)	(0.003)
Unemployed	−0.003	−0.003	−0.003	−0.003
	(0.002)	(0.003)	(0.002)	(0.003)
Other	−0.009**	−0.009**	−0.008*	−0.009**
	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)	(0.004)
Income class	0.003***	0.003***	0.003***	0.003***
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Observations	73,800	74,169	75,103	73,476
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Table A7. List of countries by income categories used in the analysis.

Low income	Lower middle income	Upper middle income	High income
Azerbaijan	Albania	Algeria	Andorra
Bangladesh	Algeria	Azerbaijan	Australia
Armenia	Armenia	Argentina	Canada
Ethiopia	Bulgaria	Brazil	Chile
Ghana	Belarus	Bulgaria	Taiwan
Haiti	China	Belarus	Cyprus
India	Dominican Rep.	Chile	Estonia
Indonesia	El Salvador	China	Finland
Kyrgyzstan	Estonia	Colombia	France
Mali	Georgia	Czech Rep.	Germany
Moldova	Ghana	Ecuador	Hong Kong
Nigeria	Guatemala	Iraq	Hungary
Pakistan	India	Kazakhstan	Italy
Rwanda	Indonesia	Jordan	Japan
Vietnam	Iran	Lebanon	South Korea
Zimbabwe	Jordan	Libya	Netherlands
Uganda	Latvia	Malaysia	New Zealand
Tanzania	Lithuania	Mexico	Norway
Burkina Faso	Moldova	Peru	Poland
Zambia	Morocco	Poland	Singapore
	Nigeria	Puerto Rico	Slovenia
	Pakistan	Romania	Spain
	Peru	Russia	Sweden
		Saudi Arabia	Switzerland
		Serbia	Trinidad and Tobago
		Slovakia	United Kingdom
		South Africa	United States
		Thailand
		Tunisia
		Turkey
		Uruguay
		Venezuela

Notes. Some countries may appear in more than one income category. This is because the data were collected from 1989 to 2014, and thus, some countries make a transition from one income category to another income category.

Table A8. Religion and pro-environmental behaviour.

	Pro-environmental	Pro-environmental	Pro-environmental	Pro-environmental
	behaviour	behaviour	behaviour	behaviour
Church attendance	0.025***
	(0.002)
Important of God		0.013***
		(0.002)
Inactive member			0.042***
			(0.012)
Active member			0.134***
			(0.013)
Not a religious person				−0.095***
				(0.009)
A convinced atheist				−0.106***
				(0.018)
Female	−0.011	−0.012	−0.004	−0.013*
	(0.007)	(0.007)	(0.009)	(0.007)
Age	0.000	−0.000	0.003**	0.001
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.001)
Age square	0.000	0.000	−0.000	−0.000
	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Living together as married	−0.000	−0.007	0.001	−0.008
	(0.014)	(0.014)	(0.017)	(0.014)
Divorced	−0.005	−0.011	0.017	−0.016
	(0.020)	(0.020)	(0.024)	(0.020)
Separated	−0.010	−0.025	−0.008	−0.022
	(0.025)	(0.025)	(0.031)	(0.025)
Widowed	−0.093***	−0.092***	−0.093***	−0.097***
	(0.016)	(0.016)	(0.019)	(0.016)
Single	−0.011	−0.015	−0.015	−0.020*
	(0.011)	(0.011)	(0.013)	(0.011)
Number of children	−0.008***	−0.006**	−0.003	−0.007***
	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.003)	(0.002)
Highest educational level	0.036***	0.036***	0.037***	0.037***
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.002)	(0.001)
Part time	0.042***	0.041***	0.028	0.046***
	(0.014)	(0.014)	(0.018)	(0.014)
Self employed	0.046***	0.042***	0.026*	0.045***
	(0.011)	(0.011)	(0.014)	(0.011)
Retired	−0.014	−0.016	−0.018	−0.016
	(0.015)	(0.015)	(0.018)	(0.015)
Housewife	0.027**	0.019	0.029*	0.023*
	(0.012)	(0.012)	(0.015)	(0.012)
Students	0.102***	0.097***	0.100***	0.084***
	(0.015)	(0.015)	(0.019)	(0.015)
Unemployed	0.002	0.000	−0.002	−0.001
	(0.012)	(0.012)	(0.015)	(0.012)
Other	−0.025	−0.030	−0.059**	−0.035
	(0.021)	(0.021)	(0.027)	(0.021)
Income class	0.026***	0.027***	0.034***	0.026***
	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)
Constant	−0.067	−0.099	−0.939***	0.044
	(0.078)	(0.079)	(0.073)	(0.080)
Observations	82,947	84,010	55,090	82,460
R-squared	0.123	0.128	0.156	0.132
Religious denomination	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Year FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Country FE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Notes. This table reports linear regression estimates of four alternative measures of religious beliefs. The dependent variable in columns (1–4) is an index of pro-environmental behaviour, 0 otherwise. Robust standard errors in parentheses, *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

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Notes

1 Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES) are the two faith-based organizations that intervened in the Tanzania case through local sheikhs. Read more about ARC and IFEES in http://arcworld.org/ and http://www.ifees.org.uk/, respectively.

2 The term 'unwillingness to contribute' refers to a protest against contributing money for environmental protection. In the stated preference (SP) literature, individuals who refuse (do not have genuine willingness to pay of zero) for environmental protection are called protesters (Bateman et al. 2002; Frey and Pirscher 2019).

3 The data are available on the following website: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp

4 The data can be accessed in the following website: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/378834-how-does-the-world-bank-classify-countries

5 The data can be accessed in the following website: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/378834-how-does-the-world-bank-classify-countries

6 An alternative approach to model this is either by creating a single index of PEB or use factor analysis. We thank one of the reviewers for raising this important concern. However, we chose the current methodology because the indicators are framed very differently; some of the indicators are measured based on revealed behaviour while some are measured based on stated willingness to protect the environment. Further, we are interested to understand whether the effect of religion on the different framing of indicators remains the same. In addition, related studies have used a similar approach (e.g. Owen and Videras 2007; Sulemana 2016; Bénabou, Ticchi, and Vindigni 2015). Nevertheless, following the reviewer's suggestion, as a robustness check, we have created an index using factor analysis based on the three indicators (statements) of stated willingness to protect the environment: ‘willingness to contribute money’, ‘willingness to accept tax increase’, ‘government should pay for environmental protection’, as the data for these indicators were collected in three of the six waves of WVS. We find consistent results with the approach that we employed in this paper and the full result can be found in Table A8 in the appendix.

7 WTA and WTP question formats are widely used in stated preference surveys.

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Appendix

Table A7. List of countries by income categories used in the analysis.

CSV Display Table

Table A8. Religion and pro-environmental behaviour.

CSV Display Table

Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy

Does religion promote pro-environmental behaviour? A cross-country investigation

Articles

Does religion promote pro-environmental behaviour? A cross-country investigation

ABSTRACTFormulae display:?Mathematical formulae have been encoded as MathML and are displayed in this HTML version using MathJax in order to improve their display. Uncheck the box to turn MathJax off. This feature requires Javascript. Click on a formula to zoom.

1. Introduction

2. Data

2.1. Measuring Pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes

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Table 1. Variables definitions.

2.2. Measuring religion

2.3. Income group

2.4. Other control variables

3. Empirical strategy

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Religion and pro-environmental behaviour and attitudes

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Table 2. Religion and environmental attitudes and behaviour – pooled data.

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Table 3. Religion on stated willingness to contribute money for the prevention of environmental pollution.

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Table 4. Religion on protest response and donation to ecological organization.

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Table 5. Religion on environmental protection vs economic growth and participation in environmental demonstration.

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Table A1. Religion and willingness to contribute money.

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Table A2. Religion and willingness to accept to increase in tax.

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Table A3. Religion and government's role in environmental protection.

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Table A4. Religion and ecological donation.

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Table A5. Religion and environmental protection vs economic growth.

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Table A6. Religion and participation in environmental demonstration.

4.2. Does the effect of religion vary across different income groups?

5. Conclusion

Supplementary Material

Disclosure statement

Notes

References

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Table A7. List of countries by income categories used in the analysis.

Published online:

Table A8. Religion and pro-environmental behaviour.

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ABSTRACT
Formulae display:?Mathematical formulae have been encoded as MathML and are displayed in this HTML version using MathJax in order to improve their display. Uncheck the box to turn MathJax off. This feature requires Javascript. Click on a formula to zoom.