TY  - JOUR
AU  - Martín, A.M.
AU  - Hernández, B.
AU  - Hess, S.
AU  - Ruiz, C.
AU  - Alonso, I.
T1  - The Relationship Between Moral Judgments and Causal Explanations of Everyday Environmental Crimes
LA  - eng
PY  - 2013
SP  - 320
EP  - 342
T2  - Social Justice Research
SN  - 0885-7466
VL  - 26
IS  - 3
AB  - Environmental crimes are behaviors that break environmental laws but are not universally perceived as illegal, or even reproachable, though they harm both the environment and human beings. This lack of social reproach may be related to the peculiarities of the consequences, sanctions, victims, and perpetrators. This study aims to analyze the social perception of environmental crime, focusing on the moral judgment and explanation of instances occurring in the surroundings of ordinary people in their everyday lives. A questionnaire including seven descriptions of environmental transgressions and 17 rating scales referring to moral judgments and behavior explanations was answered by 487 persons, living in a territory highly protected by environmental laws. Results show that people generate a perceptive space in which environmental transgressions have relative positions framed by three dimensions. Moral judgments and explanations of environmental crimes are related, and indicate that people consider environmental crime to be wrong in general terms and a reflection of the badness of transgressors. However, certain circumstances may lead individuals who are not really bad to behave illegally in environmental terms. To explain illegal anti-ecological behavior in these circumstances, observers use justifications and excuses that are linked to the peculiarities of illegal anti-ecological behavior. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.
DO  - 10.1007/S11211-013-0188-9
UR  - https://portalciencia.ull.es/documentos/5e3c380629995246bbf5eba3
DP  - Dialnet - Portal de la Investigación
ER  -