Determinants of futures-oriented environmental policies: A multi-country analysis

This research explores the validity of several hypotheses concerning the future-orientedness of countries. Nine hypotheses that relate futures-orientedness to characteristics of countries are presented. Several of these hypotheses represent ‘conventional wisdom’ about the differences between developed and developing countries and their respective values and political systems. As an example, it can be argued that conventional wisdom holds that more democratic countries will be more futures-oriented. The number of international environmental agreements signed by a country and the number of provisions related to AGENDA21 being implemented by a country were used as proxies for measures of futures-orientedness. Almost 30 independent variables drawn from a variety of secondary sources were used in two multiple regression models to investigate the hypotheses. The results do not support several pieces of conventional wisdom. Specifically, the results suggest that there is: a negative relationship between democracy and futures-orientedness; no relationship between the level of development and futures-orientedness; and a negative relationship exists between wealth and life expectancy and futures-orientedness. These results call into question a view that more democratic, developed, and rich countries are more concerned about the future than their ‘less developed’ counterparts. The results did indicate that countries with more environmental problems tend to be more futures-oriented as are countries that may be experiencing population pressures. Countries with more land tend to be less futures-oriented. More work is needed to better understand the relationships between culture and governmental decision-making structures on futures-orientedness. Future research should also focus on constructing better measures of futures-orientedness.