Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors Among Jeju Islanders, South Korea - Island Futures: Conservation and Development Across the Asia-Pacific Region - page 119

Consumption and in Energy-Saving Behavior. Lower monthly income was correlated
with higher levels of General Control of Consumption and Energy-Saving Behavior.

The Dominant Cultural Value System

As explained earlier, consumerism and environmentalism are in conflict in relation to
sustainable development. Each person, however, has a different balance between the
two cultural imperatives. The dominant cultural value system of the interviewees was
analyzed by comparing each person's mean score of all their responses to the scale
items for consumerism and environmentalism with the respective group means.
As shown in Table 9.9 , environmentalists were defined as those who had a higher
individual mean environmentalism score compared to the group mean but a lower
individual mean consumerism score compared to the group mean. In contrast, con-
sumerists had a higher individual mean consumerism score but a lower individual
mean environmentalism score than the corresponding group scores. The individual
mean scores of contradictionists , who have strong beliefs in both environmentalism
and consumerism, were higher than both of the group mean scores, and the indi-
vidual mean scores of marginalists , who do not adopt either of the dominant cultural
imperatives in postmodern society, were both lower. Thus, contradictionists and
marginalists can be thought of as in anomie in terms of the dominant cultural value
systems. Of the 500 interviewees, 34.0% were environmentalists, 30.3% were con-
sumerists, 15.4% were contradictionists, and 20.8% were marginalists.
Analysis of variance enables us to find the following to be significant. Age, religion,
and civic engagement were significant factors in determining the four categories
( P < 0.1). Environmentalists were more likely to be 60 and over and actively engaged
in civic society. Consumerists tended to be younger, more passively engaged in civic
activities, and less likely to profess a religion. Contradictionists tended to be younger
(20-29), Christian, and passively engaged in civic society. Marginalists tended to
be older, passively engaged in civic society, and Buddhist.

Relationship Among Consumerism, Environmentalism,
and Environmental Behavior

Consumerism, environmentalism, and environmental behavior do not exist inde-
pendently, rather they are interrelated. Correlation coefficients were estimated to
identify the relationships among them, with the expectation of exploring to what

Table 9.9 Dominant cultural value system pattern

Environmentalism
Higher than mean score Consumerism Lower than mean score

Higher than mean score Contradictionist Consumerist

Lower than mean score Environmentalist Marginalist