Overview

Abstract (English)

The concept of ecological citizenship, a transformative ideology of citizenship whereby citizens are connected through their moral environmental obligations, has been mainly theoretical in nature within contemporary literature. In addition, the literature on pro-environmental behaviours presupposes that individuals face barriers both externally and internally, preventing their participation in these activities. A lack of nationally representative data exists that quantifies the impacts on pro-environmental behaviour participation. This thesis aims to address these three components by applying the theoretical foundation of ecological citizenship to a dataset covering the environmental household behaviours of a sample of Canadian households (N = 22,363) representative of the majority of the Canadian population. The creation of an index of behaviours that could be theoretically associated with ecological citizenship is the primary goal of this thesis. The analysis then examines the index alongside variables that situate both the geographic, socio-economic, and demographic characteristics of these households. Using a combination of multivariate linear and logistic regressions, the impact of these variables will be analyzed to identify the strength and direction of these variables, taking into consideration the effect of all variables at once. Findings suggest that certain variables have a greater impact on the number of behaviours a household can participate in. From these findings, a discussion of how best to address these impacts is explored within the context of our foundation on ecological citizenship and how best to bring this theoretical concept into an applied sphere of thinking.

Abstract (French)

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