Abstract

With growing public awareness of critical environmental issues, arguments about man's obligation to nature often assume a moral dimension. Kohlberg's theory of moral development is relevant to research on development of environmental ethical reasoning. From Kohlberg's perspective, moral development refers to the ontogenesis of justice reasoning in terms of moral judgments at progressively more abstract, comprehensive, and universal levels of cognition . Due to the philosophical assumptions of his model , Kohlberg's conception of morality was Western and anthropocentric. Application of his theoretical framework in a environmental context represents a theoretical departure from most previous research. ;This paper reports an investigation of development of environmental ethical reasoning. A model of ontogenetic development of environmental ethical reasoning was synthesized from related research and theoretical extension of Kohlberg's model. An instrument, based on the Defined Issues Test , was developed to measure principled moral reasoning using an environmental ethical orientation. The content of the instrument was derived from informal interviews about environmental ethics and content analyses of environmental literature. ;The behavior of approximately 25,000 subjects was observed at several experimental sites in a national park. Persons observed to engage in environmentally destructive behavior and a matched random sample of other visitors were contacted for inclusion in the study. A total of 568 respondents completed the environmental ethics questionnaire, which was administered by mail. ;Analyses indicate subjects' responses conform to the hypothesized stages of environmental ethical reasoning. Subjects were consistent in use of stage of reasoning. There was a significant correlation between pretest subjects' DIT scores and scores on the environmental instrument. Age is correlated with scores on the environmental instrument among younger subjects. Education is significantly correlated with scores among all subjects. ;Conclusions based on the analyses and assumptions about environmental ethical development are reviewed. Tests for reliability and validity of the instrument are reported. The limitations of the research in practical application and suggestions for future research are discussed