Summary: The main objective of this project is to examine various characteristics and attributes that hinder or promote proenvironmental behaviour in Turkey. We aim to answer one key question: What affective, religious, psychological, and ecological perceptions influence environment-related values and practices in Turkey?

We will conduct surveys with individuals having diverse demographic and socio-economic profiles.

We will draw on, in part, a novel survey instrument that has been developed by Taylor, Wright, and LaVasseur (2020), combined with an additional and novel survey scale focusing on the world’s most prevalent religious perceptions and beliefs. To answer our research question, we will reconsider our hypotheses in the non-western, predominantly Muslim, context.

This project comes to address two gaps in our knowledge. First, the role that non-western religious, non-religious, and hybrid identities play in the way people respond to environmental challenges. Second, the vast majority of research on Islam and the environment has been theoretical and theological. There has been very little social scientific research into how people in Islamic cultures think about environmental issues, including whether and to what extent scientific understandings influence environment-related values and behaviors.

In line with the objectives of the INSBS network and this grant scheme, this research will help us better understand the relationship between beliefs, values, and environmental behaviour, as well as to evaluate interactions between science (especially the environmental sciences), religion, and society. We intend to move beyond simplistic binaries of religion and secular, and of religion perceived as good or bad. Such binaries occlude understanding of the complex relationships between affect, religious and religion-resembling perceptions, and environmental behaviours.

Based on the data we collect in this project; we plan to publish, at minimum, one but likely more than one open access peer-reviewed journal article. We will also disseminate this knowledge, both in English and Turkish, through various means such as articles, book chapters, interviews, public writing, and webinars to support the future efforts of both researchers and practitioners who engage with interdisciplinary research on religion, non-religion, and ecology in cross-cultural contexts.