ABSTRACT
This chapter constitutes an initial approach to the determinants of participation in environmental organizations, from a general point of view. After reviewing the literature on environmental participation in Chapter 3 and providing a detailed introduction to the data in Chapter 4, it is useful to now explore empirically the determinants of environmental participation. Additionally, we would like to emphasize the importance of the institutional context, an aspect that we have discussed in Chapter 2 and will discuss again in Chapter 8. It is proposed that high quality political institutions and a transparent government are especially significant in motivating or facilitating citizens to provide public goods. Due to the importance of institutional and governmental issues, we have also focused on the impact of corruption on the individual participation decision. Moreover, a further aim of this chapter is to characterize the kind of people who usually participate in environmental organizations from a microeconomic perspective. This microoriented perspective will continue through the next two empirical chapters before we finalize the book in Chapter 8 with a more macro-oriented approach.
