The hierarchy enforcement hypothesis of environmental exploitation: A social dominance perspective

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) predicts support for unsustainable environmental exploitation, but the mechanism driving this effect remains unclear. Here we propose and test a novel Hierarchy Enforcement Hypothesis of Environmental Exploitation. Two experiments analysed using Bayesian moderated regression showed that SDO predicted support for a new mining operation expected to generate further profits to high-status groups in society, but not when profits were expected to equally benefit all members of the community. SDO predicts environmental exploitation to the extent that doing so helps sustain and widen the gap between dominant and disadvantaged groups through the disproportionate allocation of resources. This research identifies a dominance motive that may explain why some people support environmental exploitation more than others.