Civic Responsibility and the Environment: Linking Local Conditions to Community Environmental Activeness
- 1 February 2004
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Society & Natural Resources
- Vol. 17 (2) , 97-112
- https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920490261212
Abstract
In this article, we examine the extent to which variations in local social, economic, and spatial conditions might account for variation in community environmental activeness across 208 communities falling within nonmetropolitan areas in Mississippi. We use GIS technology to identify community boundaries, and use key informant and census data to measure community attributes. The findings indicate that community environmental activeness tends to be higher among communities that provide greater access to social capital. The level of community environmental activeness was also found to rest on the size of a community and its regional location. Community activeness increases with the size of community, but it decreases when a community is situated in an economically and socially disadvantaged region. Similarly, community activeness was found to be low in communities with low levels of education.Keywords
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