Attitudes towards economic inequality are crucial to uphold structural economic inequality in democratic societies. Previous research has shown that socioeconomic status, political ideology, and the ...objective level of economic inequality associated with individuals' attitudes towards economic inequality. However, some have suggested that people are aware of the individual and social features that are more functional according to the level of economic inequality. Therefore, individual predispositions such as cultural values could also predict these attitudes. In the current research, we expand previous results testing whether cultural variables at the individual level predict attitudes towards economic inequality. After analysing survey data including samples from 52 countries (N = 89,565), we found that self‐enhancement values predict positively, and self‐transcendence negatively, attitudes towards economic inequality as the ideal economic inequality measures. This result remained significant even after controlling by socioeconomic status, political ideology, and objective economic inequality. However, this effect is only true in high and middle social mobility countries, but not in countries with low social mobility. The present research highlights how cultural values and country social mobility are crucial factors to addressing attitudes towards economic inequality.
The impact of personal values on preferences, choices, and behaviors has evoked much interest. Relatively little is known, however, about the processes through which values impact behavior. In this ...conceptual article, we consider both the content and the structural aspects of the relationships between values and behavior. We point to unique features of values that have implications to their relationships with behavior and build on these features to review past research. We then propose a conceptual model that presents three organizing principles: accessibility, interpretation, and control. For each principle, we identify mechanisms through which values and behavior are connected. Some of these mechanisms have been exemplified in past research and are reviewed; others call for future research. Integrating the knowledge on the multiple ways in which values impact behavior deepens our understanding of the complex ways through which cognition is translated into action.
Key relationships of farmers (and other rural land managers) and resultant value conflicts between farmers and conservation programs
Display omitted
•We propose a conceptual framework to understand ...farmer participation in incentive schemes.•Our framework is based on three key relationships: Farmer—Land, Farmer—Community, Farmer—Landscape.•We identified value conflicts that served as barriers to participation in an agri-environmental incentive scheme.•Aligning programs with the values of target participants could increase enrollment and reinforce stewardship.
Agri-environmental incentive programs seek to compensate farmers for changes to enhance ecosystem services and/or biodiversity, yet enrolling participants is a common challenge. We examine this challenge using a relational values lens, a framework developed here in reference to three key relationships of farmers to: their land, community and landscape. We then apply this framework to better understand participation in an incentive program for riparian buffers in the US Northwest (the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program). Results are derived from in-depth interviews among participants and potential participants. Using qualitative coding and analysis, we identified five key value conflicts between participants and programs, via the implications of program rules for participant values: aesthetics, active land management, parcel-specific knowledge, and community knowledge about and agency over the landscape. Applying a relational values framework demonstrates how program conditions appear to threaten these valued relationships, leading to value conflicts between programs and participants. Analysis of participant responses suggests that grounding conservation programs in locally salient values could not only increase enrollment but also foster stewardship values that underlie conservation. We conclude with suggestions as to how agri-environmental incentive programs could adapt to better fit with farmer values—making programs more attractive without undermining their ecological effectiveness.
The study examined the relations between adolescents’ self‐esteem and two aspects of values: content and congruence with classmates. Using a large sample of Israeli adolescents (N = 1,683; ...Mage = 14.36, SD = 2.24, range = 11–18, 54.31% females), we found that self‐esteem related negatively to self‐enhancement values and positively to conservation values using zero order correlations. Multilevel polynomial regressions, controlling for demographic differences, found significant quadratic associations of self‐esteem with self‐enhancement, self‐transcendence, openness‐to‐change, and conservation values. Furthermore, using Response Surface Analyses, it was found that adolescents who were congruent with their classmates’ self‐enhancement and self‐transcendence values showed the highest levels of self‐esteem. The findings point to the importance of social context for the relations between values and self‐esteem among adolescents.
The circular structure of basic human values is the core element of the Schwartz value theory. The structure demonstrated high robustness across cultures. However, the specific correlations between ...values and the differences in these correlations across countries have received little attention. The current research investigated the within-country correlations between the four higher order values. We estimated the correlations with meta-analytical mixed-effects models based on 10 surveys, on different value instruments, and on data from 104 countries. Analyses revealed theoretically expected negative relations between openness to change and conservation values and between self-transcendence and self-enhancement values. More interestingly, openness to change and self-transcendence values related negatively with each other, as did conservation and self-enhancement. Openness to change and self-enhancement values related predominantly positively, as did conservation and self-transcendence values. Correlations between the adjacent values were weaker in more economically developed countries, revealing higher value complexity of these societies. These findings were consistent across multiple surveys and after controlling for levels of education and income inequality. We concluded that, across most countries, values tend to be organized predominantly in line with the Social versus Person Focus opposition, whereas the Growth versus Self-Protection opposition is pronounced only in more economically developed countries.
This open access book, summarising the research conducted at this Jean Monnet Chair, seeks to identify the ethical spirit of European Union (EU) values. EU integration began at the economic level; ...human rights were only added at a later stage. Finally, the Lisbon Treaty turned the EU into a ‘Union of values’ by enshrining certain concepts in Art 2 TEU. This provision can be seen as a hub linked to various other provisions of EU primary and secondary law. The values contained therein have, amongst others, been applied to two areas (digitalisation and non-financial reporting, partly in sports), and further specified in others (health and partly in sports). This book analyses the evolution of values (ratione temporis) and the questions of who is entitled and who is obliged (ratione personae). Besides the external perspective (ratione limitis; e.g., Brexit), it focuses on the composition of the EU’s common values (ratione materiae). As Art 2 TEU can be viewed as a hub, it is essential to focus on various relations, not only between values, but also between values and other provisions of EU law, as well as other concepts. Based on this description of the status quo, the book subsequently addresses a possible future direction, arguing for an additional narrative (trust), an additional value (environmental protection), and a more communitarian Union. In closing, apart from the classical commitment of the EU and the Member States to uphold the values of the EU, the book discusses the level of individuals and values as virtues. Various figures and tables complement this overview of the status quo of the Union of values and outline of its future direction.
A new public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public administration and New Public Management. The new movement is a response to the challenges of a networked, ...multisector, no‐one‐wholly‐in‐charge world and to the shortcomings of previous public administration approaches. In the new approach, values beyond efficiency and effectiveness—and especially democratic values—are prominent. Government has a special role to play as a guarantor of public values, but citizens as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations are also important as active public problem solvers. The article highlights value‐related issues in the new approach and presents an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise.
Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg Podcast Episode
We examine the potential of co-production to enhance or obstruct the realization of public values by analysing what value tensions co-producers experience and what coping strategies they follow. ...In-depth study of a social care initiative in Flanders shows that co-production enhances the realization of values relating to services delivered, relationships between public servants and citizens, and the democratic quality of the service delivery process. However, public servants and citizen co-producers experience tensions between values, such as efficiency, individual freedom of co-producers, reciprocity, and inclusion. In trying to deal with these value tensions, public servants are found to follow a variety of coping strategies, whereas citizen co-producers tend to escalate tensions or avoid coping with them. The type of coping strategy followed, however, influences if and what values are ultimately represented in the service delivery process and its results.
Despite the normative nature of sustainability, values and their role in sustainability transformations are often discussed in vague terms, and when concrete conceptualizations exist, they widely ...differ across fields of application. To provide guidance for navigating the complexity arising from the various conceptualizations and operationalization of values, here, we differentiate four general perspectives of how and where values are important for transformation related sustainability science. The first perspective, surfacing implicit values, revolves around critical reflection on normative assumptions in scientific practices. Sustainability transformations concern fundamental ethical questions and are unavoidably influenced by assumptions sustainability scientists hold in their interactions with society. The second perspective, negotiating values, is related to the values held by different actors in group decision processes. Developing and implementing solution options to sustainability problems requires multiple values to be accounted for in order to increase civic participation and social legitimacy. The third perspective, eliciting values, focuses on the ascription of values to particular objects or choices related to specific sustainability challenges, for example, valuations of nature. The fourth perspective, transforming through values, highlights the dynamic nature and transformational potential of values. Value change is complex but possible, and may generate systemic shifts in patterns of human behaviours. Explicit recognition of these four interconnected values perspectives can help sustainability scientists to: (1) move beyond general discussions implying that values matter; (2) gain an awareness of the positionality of one’s own values perspective when undertaking values related sustainability research; and (3) reflect on the operationalizations of values in different contexts.
PDF
