Environmental mentalities: social discourses of environmental issues of Andalusians living in urban areas

Abstract

Environmental concerns have been spread and generalised in the last few years. Nevertheless, this larger knowledge and awareness about environmental issues have not produced a similar expansion of a sense of responsibility in personal behaviours. This gap between environmental concerns and ecological behaviours has puzzled researchers. However, this can be explained by the nature of environmental mentalities, conceptions about the environment which are socially produced and spread. This paper presents the outcomes of a recent research that has explored the environmental mentalities of Andalusian people who live in urban areas. To this end, we have analysed the social discourses produced in a series of focus-groups.