Both academics and policy-makers tended to assume that citizens of the poorer, Southern-hemisphere nations were so preoccupied with satisfying basic needs of food, shelter and security that they placed little priority on environmental quality. However, surveys have found surprisingly small differences in the environmental perceptions and priorities of citizens of wealthy and poor nations.

Indeed, on many measures residents of poor nations were found to express higher levels of environmental concern than did their counterparts in rich countries. Inglehart´s theory of "post-materialist values" was one of the scholarly cornerstones of conventional wisdom, as it posited that environmental concern is a post-materialist value that emerges only after more material concerns such as economic security are satisfied.

The surveys presented challenge both conventional wisdom and the theory of post-materialist values as the source of environmental concern. The presentation ends by suggesting alternative explanations of the global spread of citizen concern for environmental quality.

About Riley E. Dunlap
Riley E. Dunlap is currently Donner Professor at Åbo Akademi University in Finland, after recently resigning as Boeing Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sociology at Washington State University,USA.

One of the founders of Environmental Sociology, he is the author of several influential articles in the field and senior editor of the Handbook of Environmental Sociology (2002) and Sociological Theory and the Environment (2002).

Besides chairing the American Sociological Association´s Section on Environmental Sociology he served as President of the International Sociological Association´s Research Committee on Environment and Society from 1994-98.