{"title":"A cross-cultural study on countries' environmental performance: The influence of religion","authors":"Francesca Di Pillo, Fabrizio Rossi","doi":"10.1111/ajes.12599","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although numerous scientific studies have extensively analyzed religion's impact on environmental performance at the firm level, the literature on environmental effects at a country level is relatively poor. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying how the dimensions of national culture, including religion, impact a country's sustainability performance in 96 countries. We apply Geert Hofstede's cross-cultural dimensions and evaluate countries' sustainability performance using the EPI indicator, which provides a comprehensive environmental overview, including indicators such as climate change, environmental health, and ecosystem vitality. Additionally, to provide a more comprehensive framework for the sustainability performance of countries, we conducted a comparative analysis using the SDG index scores encompassing 1056 country-year observations. Our findings suggest that the impact on a country's environmental performance varies according to the cultural dimension, mainly, the Christian religion positively influences national sustainability performance.</p>","PeriodicalId":47133,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","volume":"84 1","pages":"179-204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12599","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Although numerous scientific studies have extensively analyzed religion's impact on environmental performance at the firm level, the literature on environmental effects at a country level is relatively poor. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying how the dimensions of national culture, including religion, impact a country's sustainability performance in 96 countries. We apply Geert Hofstede's cross-cultural dimensions and evaluate countries' sustainability performance using the EPI indicator, which provides a comprehensive environmental overview, including indicators such as climate change, environmental health, and ecosystem vitality. Additionally, to provide a more comprehensive framework for the sustainability performance of countries, we conducted a comparative analysis using the SDG index scores encompassing 1056 country-year observations. Our findings suggest that the impact on a country's environmental performance varies according to the cultural dimension, mainly, the Christian religion positively influences national sustainability performance.
期刊介绍:
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) was founded in 1941, with support from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, to encourage the development of transdisciplinary solutions to social problems. In the introduction to the first issue, John Dewey observed that “the hostile state of the world and the intellectual division that has been built up in so-called ‘social science,’ are … reflections and expressions of the same fundamental causes.” Dewey commended this journal for its intention to promote “synthesis in the social field.” Dewey wrote those words almost six decades after the social science associations split off from the American Historical Association in pursuit of value-free knowledge derived from specialized disciplines. Since he wrote them, academic or disciplinary specialization has become even more pronounced. Multi-disciplinary work is superficially extolled in major universities, but practices and incentives still favor highly specialized work. The result is that academia has become a bastion of analytic excellence, breaking phenomena into components for intensive investigation, but it contributes little synthetic or holistic understanding that can aid society in finding solutions to contemporary problems. Analytic work remains important, but in response to the current lop-sided emphasis on specialization, the board of AJES has decided to return to its roots by emphasizing a more integrated and practical approach to knowledge.