Environmental behavior in Bangkok, Thailand: A portrait of attitudes, values, and behavior

Economic Development and Cultural Change

Volumn 47, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 524-557

  Daniere, Amrita G ^a   Takahashi, Lois M ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ATTITUDINAL SURVEY; ENVIRONMENTALISM; PUBLIC ATTITUDE; URBAN SOCIETY;

THAILAND;

EID: 0032775366     PISSN: 00130079     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/452418     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. See, e.g., Colin MacAndrews, "The Indonesian Environmental Impact Management Agency (BAPEDAL): Its Role, Development and Future," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 30 (April 1994): 85-103; Michael Douglass, "The Political Economy of Urban Poverty and Environmental Management in Asia: Access, Empowerment and Community Based Alternatives," Environment and Urbanization 4 (October 1992): 9-32; and Amrita Daniere and Lois M. Takahashi, "Environmental Policy in Thailand: Values, Attitudes and Behaviors among the Slum Dwellers of Bangkok," Environment and Planning C 15 (1997): 305-27, for descriptions of recent efforts in several developing countries.
2. See, e.g., Colin MacAndrews, "The Indonesian Environmental Impact Management Agency (BAPEDAL): Its Role, Development and Future," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 30 (April 1994): 85-103; Michael Douglass, "The Political Economy of Urban Poverty and Environmental Management in Asia: Access, Empowerment and Community Based Alternatives," Environment and Urbanization 4 (October 1992): 9-32; and Amrita Daniere and Lois M. Takahashi, "Environmental Policy in Thailand: Values, Attitudes and Behaviors among the Slum Dwellers of Bangkok," Environment and Planning C 15 (1997): 305-27, for descriptions of recent efforts in several developing countries.
3. See, e.g., Colin MacAndrews, "The Indonesian Environmental Impact Management Agency (BAPEDAL): Its Role, Development and Future," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 30 (April 1994): 85-103; Michael Douglass, "The Political Economy of Urban Poverty and Environmental Management in Asia: Access, Empowerment and Community Based Alternatives," Environment and Urbanization 4 (October 1992): 9-32; and Amrita Daniere and Lois M. Takahashi, "Environmental Policy in Thailand: Values, Attitudes and Behaviors among the Slum Dwellers of Bangkok," Environment and Planning C 15 (1997): 305-27, for descriptions of recent efforts in several developing countries.
4. Dale Whittington, Donald T. Lauria, Kyeongae Choe, Jeffrey A. Hughes, and Vijay Swarna, "Household Sanitation in Kumasi, Ghana: A Description of Current Practices, Attitudes, and Perceptions," World Development 21 (1993): 733-48, make this point about sanitation systems in a number of developing countries and present very detailed data for residents of Kumasi, Ghana.
5. A recent article by Alice Jones, "The Psychology of Sustainability: What Planners Can Learn from Attitude Research," Journal of Planning Education and Research 16 (Fall 1996): 56-65, e.g., makes a strong argument for the need for North American planners to become more aware of attitude research, as it has important implications for a wide variety of planning fields.
6. Attitude and behavior research in industrialized countries, however, is relatively well researched. An important source of information in this area is Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein, Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980).
7. David E. Dowall, "A Second Look at the Bangkok Land and Housing Market," Urban Studies 29 (1992): 25-37.
8. Historically, the Thai Baht has been pegged to the U.S. dollar at an exchange rate of 25 Baht to US$1. Current well-reported problems within Thailand's financial markets have caused this rate to fluctuate significantly in recent months. In this article we report all prices in Thai Baht and U.S. dollars at the historic exchange rate given that at the time the data were collected the historic rate was, in fact, reality.
9. Charles Setchell, Final Report of the Greater Bangkok Slum Housing Market Study (Bangkok: Regional Housing and Urban Development Office, United States Agency for International Development, 1992), vol. 1, who surveyed 968 slum households, relied on the official definition of slum as proposed by the BMA, i.e., "a group of deteriorated and disorderly housing with improper environment harmful to the health and security of residents. A congested community is defined by the criteria of housing density, i.e., 15 houses per one rai of land" (p. 7).
10. Gilbert F. White, David J. Bradley, and Anne U. White, Drawers of Water (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), are generally regarded as the source of the seminal discussion of the primary role of women in water-related spheres. In addition, women have been recognized as having decision-making authority over the household's water and sanitation practices in developing countries in a number of subsequent studies (see, e.g., Randall Crane and Amrita Daniere, "Measuring Access to Basic Services in Global Cities: Descriptive and Behavioral Approaches," Journal of the American Planning Association 62 [1996]: 203-21.)
11. Gilbert F. White, David J. Bradley, and Anne U. White, Drawers of Water (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), are generally regarded as the source of the seminal discussion of the primary role of women in water-related spheres. In addition, women have been recognized as having decision-making authority over the household's water and sanitation practices in developing countries in a number of subsequent studies (see, e.g., Randall Crane and Amrita Daniere, "Measuring Access to Basic Services in Global Cities: Descriptive and Behavioral Approaches," Journal of the American Planning Association 62 [1996]: 203-21.)
12. As of December 1994, the poverty line in the BMA was approximately 3,000 Baht per month. This suggests that most households (90%) in the sample do not live in conditions of abject poverty. In contrast, the average household income for the region in 1994 was 18,540 Baht per month, which is obviously much more than the average in our sample households.
13. For a more detailed account of the organizational relationships among agencies involved in water and sanitation provision, see Daniere and Takahashi.
14. Amrita G. Daniere, "Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Southeast Asia: The Case of Thailand," Third World Planning Review 18 (1996): 373-95.
15. This is well below the standard recommended for household consumption and industrial utilization purposes, i.e., 2.0 milligrams per liter, according to the Asian Development Bank, "Accelerated Water Supply and Sewerage Program (Final Study Report)" (Bangkok: National Economic and Social Development Board, Office of the Prime Minister, 1990).
16. Saengroaj Srisawaskraisorn and Orawan Bamroong-ua, "Bangkokians to Pay for Wastewater," Bangkok Post 499, no. 364 (December 30, 1994): 1-3.
17. Most of the discussion regarding solid waste disposal services relies on Banasophit Mekvichai and Phanu Kritiporn, "Background Report 7: Improving the Urban Environment" (paper presented at the 1990 year-end conference, Industrializing Thailand and Its Impact on the Environment, of the Development Research Foundation, Bangkok, Thailand).
18. Antibiotics as well as a wide range of more exotic traditional medicines are generally available without a prescription throughout Thailand.
19. A detailed explanation of the process involved in selecting the cultural values to be included and their definitions is provided in Daniere and Takahashi (n. 1 above). Some excellent sources of general information on Thai cultural values include Jeremy Kemp, "The Manipulation of Personal Relations: From Kinship to Patron-Clientage," and Han ten Brummelhuis, "Abundance and Avoidance: An Interpretation of Thai Individualism," both in Strategies and Structure in Thai Society, ed. Han ten Brummelhuis and Jeremy H. Kemp (Amsterdam: Anthropological-Sociological Centre, 1984).
20. A detailed explanation of the process involved in selecting the cultural values to be included and their definitions is provided in Daniere and Takahashi (n. 1 above). Some excellent sources of general information on Thai cultural values include Jeremy Kemp, "The Manipulation of Personal Relations: From Kinship to Patron-Clientage," and Han ten Brummelhuis, "Abundance and Avoidance: An Interpretation of Thai Individualism," both in Strategies and Structure in Thai Society, ed. Han ten Brummelhuis and Jeremy H. Kemp (Amsterdam: Anthropological-Sociological Centre, 1984).
21. Respondents did not sufficiently disagree regarding the other value statements to be divided into distinct groups on the basis of their ratings across the Likert scale (with one meaning "strongly disagree" and five meaning "strongly agree"). Stated somewhat differently, the distribution of respondent ratings for the statements associated with the values of fatalism and delayed gratification were more evenly distributed across categories (e.g., "you should enjoy life every day" measuring delayed gratification) or concentrated in particular categories (e.g., "children should study hard in school to have a better life," measuring delayed gratification).
22. The independent variables were all tested for correlation with one another prior to estimating the logistic regressions. As a result of these tests, the age of the respondent was not included in any of the models, since age proved to be strongly correlated with both years of education and length of tenure in the slum community.
23. See, e.g., Sandy Cairncross, "Water Supply and the Urban Poor," in The Poor Die Young: Housing and Health in Third World Cities, ed. Sandy Cairncross, Jorge Hardoy, and David Satterthwaite (London: Earthscan Publishers, 1990).
24. James S. Duesenberry, Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), in his reformulation of the theory of saving (chap. 3) argues that low economic status is felt more often and more keenly the more often one makes an unfavorable comparison between the quality of goods one consumes and the goods consumed by others. The frequency of this comparison will depend on the ratio of one's expenditures to those of others in similar surroundings, which implies that those who are most dissatisfied with their income will be in the lowest income group.
25. See ten Brummelhius for a much more complete discussion on the nature of Thai individualism.
26. See, e.g., E. Jimenez, "The Magnitude and Determinants of Home Improvement in Self-Help Housing: Manila's Tondo Project," Land Economics 59 (1987): 70-83.
27. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for this insight.
28. See Kyeonge Choe, Dale Whittington, and Donald T. Lauria, "The Economic Benefits of Surface Water Quality Improvements in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Davao, Philippines," Land Economics 72 (November 1996): 519-37, for an example from the Philippines; or Dale Whittington, Donald T. Lauria, and Xinming Mu, "A Study of Water Vending and Willingness to Pay for Water in Onitsha, Nigeria," World Development 19 (February/March 1991): 179-98, for a case study on Nigeria.
29. See Kyeonge Choe, Dale Whittington, and Donald T. Lauria, "The Economic Benefits of Surface Water Quality Improvements in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Davao, Philippines," Land Economics 72 (November 1996): 519-37, for an example from the Philippines; or Dale Whittington, Donald T. Lauria, and Xinming Mu, "A Study of Water Vending and Willingness to Pay for Water in Onitsha, Nigeria," World Development 19 (February/March 1991): 179-98, for a case study on Nigeria.
30. Examples include "Administering Contingent Valuation Survey in Developing Countries," World Development 26, no. 1 (January 1998): 21-30; Dale Whittington, V. Kerry Smith, and Apia Okorafor, "Giving Respondents Time to Think in Contingent Valuation Studies: A Developing Country Application," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 22 (May 1992): 205-25; and Trudy Ann Cameron and John Quiggin, "Estimation Using Contingent Value Data from a 'Dichotomous Choice with Follow-up' Questionnaire," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 27 (November 1994): 218-34.
31. Examples include "Administering Contingent Valuation Survey in Developing Countries," World Development 26, no. 1 (January 1998): 21-30; Dale Whittington, V. Kerry Smith, and Apia Okorafor, "Giving Respondents Time to Think in Contingent Valuation Studies: A Developing Country Application," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 22 (May 1992): 205-25; and Trudy Ann Cameron and John Quiggin, "Estimation Using Contingent Value Data from a 'Dichotomous Choice with Follow-up' Questionnaire," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 27 (November 1994): 218-34.
32. Examples include "Administering Contingent Valuation Survey in Developing Countries," World Development 26, no. 1 (January 1998): 21-30; Dale Whittington, V. Kerry Smith, and Apia Okorafor, "Giving Respondents Time to Think in Contingent Valuation Studies: A Developing Country Application," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 22 (May 1992): 205-25; and Trudy Ann Cameron and John Quiggin, "Estimation Using Contingent Value Data from a 'Dichotomous Choice with Follow-up' Questionnaire," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 27 (November 1994): 218-34.