ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that the relationship between Internet use and social capital can be manifest through politics and attitudes about the natural environment. The Internet is a powerful tool for the transmission of information among physically distant people. In order to explore the relationship between Internet use and environmental attitudes for the general population and environmentalists, two random samples were collected. The first sample was a national sample of 1,000 names and addresses that was purchased from Survey Sampling, a company that creates random lists based on the white page telephone directories and supplemented with other proprietary information sources. The second sample was a list of 1,000 names and addresses, provided free of charge by the National Parks Conservation Association, randomly selected from a database of the organization's 500,000 members. Researchers have looked at the Internet as a tool for environmental organizing and activism.
