An analysis of environmental consciousness in Singaporean households

Abstract

Environmental issues have been growing increasingly relevant in the past few decades. In Singapore, the government has recognised the pressing need to devote greater attention to environmental-related efforts, thus implementing various policies accordingly. Surveys conducted report that Singaporeans are highly environmentally conscious (Awang, 2021; Schneider Electric, 2022), yet it is unclear whether these reports accurately reflect current sentiments at the household level. As such, to determine if Singaporeans really possess high levels of environmental consciousness and whether governmental efforts have genuinely contributed to said levels, a series of ten interviews has been conducted as part of a qualitative study on Singaporean households. This paper adopts a novel methodological approach by examining environmental consciousness through three dimensions (cognitive, affective, and dispositional), finding that Singaporean households fall short in the cognitive and affective dimensions, with a middling performance in the dispositional dimension. Subsequently, this paper has included two policy recommendations aimed at simultaneously bolstering all three dimensions together, in hope that they may prove useful in truly elevating the environmental consciousness of Singaporean households in general.