Tell me your environmental epistemology and I will tell you your methodology: What surveys and indepth interviews can and cannot tell us about shifts to sustainability
Tell me your environmental epistemology and I will tell you your methodology: What surveys and indepth interviews can and cannot tell us about shifts to sustainability

Summary/Abstract: This article begins by addressing the various social and economic theoretical proposals that have been given as a solution to the ecological crisis. In the second part, we propose that adhering to one of these proposals involves using a determinate methodology. In this sense, surveys have a conservative bias that tends to reproduce the dominant ideology based on ‘sustainable development’, which affirms the compatibility of capitalist economic growth and nature conservation. However, researchers who follow the theoretical proposal of political ecology tend to use qualitative methodologies and tend to find the capitalist economy unsustainable. The third part focuses on illustrating this issue. We present research in which we compare the results of a survey on the environment in Spain with the results of a qualitative study conducted in two protected areas: the Albufera Natural Park and the Ebro Delta Natural Park. Our conclusion tries to emphasize that the surveys revealed citizen profiles with coherent environmental behaviors reflected in social practices, designed to mitigate the effects of consumption (such as recycling) but not seeking to live more in tune with the environment.

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