Abstract

This study was primarily concerned with examining the behaviors of English, French and Italian Canadians towards the environment. Given the bi-cultural environment of Montreal, Italian Canadians in our sample were divided into three groups: strong Italians, Italians acculturated toward the English culture, and Italians acculturated toward the French culture. In order to achieve the goal of our study, the three ethnic groups (studied in two separate groups, English/English Italians/strong Italians and French/French Italians/strong Italians) were compared on several variables, namely, attitudes, behaviors, environmental knowledge, values, individualism/collectivism and demographics. The results indicated that although the English Canadians held more positive environmental attitudes and had higher level of environmental knowledge than Italian Canadians, they did not exhibit any environmental friendly behaviors except they purchased less environmentally unfriendly products. Similar patterns were found for French Canadians and the opposite result was found for Italian Canadians. When we look at acculturation, English Italians and French Italians were found acculturated toward the two dominant cultures on most of the variables studied. Strong Italians in our sample were found to be the most collectivists. It was also found that French Canadians in our sample were more individualists than English Canadians. In line with this finding, much higher percentage of French Canadians placed less importance on terminal and instrumental values, which are more likely to be held by a collectivist person. Limitations and implications were provided.