Culture, communication, and schema for environmental issues: An initial exploration

In an effort to examine the intrapersonal dimensions of environmental communication, this study compares the perceptions of persons presented with an environment‐related term. Open coding procedures are used to identify six categories of environmental perception linked to the term “environmental”; and systematic differences are observed regarding the relative emphasis subjects give to various facets of this cognitive structure. The schema is then compared against subjects’ scaled responses to a survey which measures commitment to dominant and emergent environmental beliefs. A series of correlations suggest that our responses to advocacy may be significantly grounded in the complexity of our thoughts about environmental terms and our allegiance to widespread cultural paradigms.