Understanding Environmentalism: A Comparative Case Study in Chile

Abstract

Chile has been on a growth trajectory of nearly three decades. In 2010, it joined the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and was recently reclassified by the World Bank as a high-income country (Pino et al., 2015). When it comes to the environment, however, the country still faces a number of lingering local pollution problems as well as controversy over proposed development projects. A key challenge for the country in the coming decades will be deciphering different forms of environmentalism to better inform policymaking. A number of theories have attempted to explain concern for the environment, but this thesis draws primarily from the work of Ronald Inglehart (1977, 1995, 1997), whose ‘objective problems, subjective values’ (OPSV) hypothesis posits that local pollution problems lead to materialist environmentalism in developing nations while advanced industrial nations, by comparison, demonstrate concern for more abstract environmental problems through post-materialist environmentalism. This theory builds off his postmaterialist hypothesis, which argues that conditions of stability surrounding one’s upbringing are more likely to give rise to post-material values, of which concern for the environment is a flagship issue (Inglehart, 1997: 240). Analysis of two separate cases characterized respectively, by post-materialist environmentalism and materialist environmentalism, demonstrates that both components of the OPSV hypothesis are operating in Chile. Prolonged economic growth and physical security have helped crystallize post-materialist preferences among many young Chileans, while problems of local degradation continue to generate widespread concern for the environment across age and socioeconomic groups. This result challenges our understanding of the OPSV hypothesis, showing us that both materialist and post-materialist preferences can coexist within a nation and manifest themselves differently based on the issue at stake.