Environmental concern and urbanization in India: Towards psychological complexity

Abstract

Urbanizing social-ecological systems often experience environmental degradation, especially in the Global South. Traditional urban psychology has attributed this to decreasing environmental concern due to weakening connections to nature. However, urban psychological research has barely considered how predictions may improve when including psychological complexity, exemplified by context, in the urbanization-concern link. In this work, we test for sensitivity of a loss of nature connection to cultural context, for substitution by additional southern urban features, and for the emergence of aggregate preferences based on the feedback between these mediators in regard to the overall relationship. Our structural equations model is calibrated using original survey data from the globalized southern megacity Bangalore, India. The spatial explicitness of our data allows for representative sampling from its rich urban variation. Spatial lags of exogenous variables provide instrumental variables to control for endogeneity arising from feedback. The results suggest that modernization-induced value change is the main policy leverage that facilitates pro-environmental preferences within a uniquely Indian interplay of various urban psychological effects.