Study: Examining the relationship between viewing an environmental resource as sacred and perceived pollution risk
In this study, 89 participants were asked a series of questions that tested their relationship with the Ganges river. The questions gather information on the participant’s perception of how sacred the river is, their knowledge regarding the ganges river (e.g. “is the Ganga a goddess?”), whether they depended on water from the Ganges river to conduct their prayers, whether they believed that the Ganges is self-healing and the extent to which they perceived the ganges to be polluted.
The results from their study showed that most of the participants agreed that the Ganges river is polluted. Importantly, as predicted in Sachdeva’s hypothesis, it was found that participants who viewed the river as more sacred perceived the river to be less polluted than those who viewed the river as less sacred.
Also, the results showed that there is an inverse relationship between pollution perception and the belief that the Ganges river has the capacity to clean itself. The extent to which someone perceives the river as polluted was found to be an indicator of whether that person is more likely to believe that the river has the capacity to clean itself.
A summary of what we know from the study:
- Participants who viewed the river as more sacred perceived less pollution
- The less likely someone perceives the river as polluted, the more likely that the person believes that the river has the capacity to clean itself
This goes someway in affirming the following implication:
3. People who hold the river to be sacred are less likely to find religious activities that pollute the waters to be problematic.
Given that hundreds of millions of hindus hold the sacred belief that the river is extremely sacred, it is equally likely that they will find no problem in their contribution to the pollution of the river. This has been affirmed by reporters from The Guardian, who report that the majority of Hindus who worship the Ganga find the idea that their ornate offerings (to receive her blessing) can harm Ganga to be absurd.
“This widespread belief bolsters a cultural norm whereby it’s generally acceptable to use the Ganges as a rubbish bin; people will often throw their trash in the river even when a dustbin is within arm’s reach.”
This then, in part, explains why sacred beliefs can contribute to the degradation of the very resource that they hold sacred.
What this shows is that people who have stronger sacred beliefs are less likely to perceive the river as polluted. The implications of such a finding could be that the people who are most active in polluting the water through devout practices (e.g. offerings and floating corpses and ashes into the river) are also the least likely to find their behaviour problematic. Their sacred beliefs can contribute to the degradation of the very resource that they hold sacred.