Are environmental attitudes influenced by survey context? An investigation of the context dependency of the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale

•Survey context influences responses to individual environmental attitude questions.•Information about marine species tends to align responses to attitude questions.•Context effects on the distribution of attitudes is not restricted to charismatic species.

General environmental attitudes are often measured with questions added to surveys about specific environmental or non-environmental issues. Using results from a large-scale national survey on the protection of threatened and endangered marine species, we examine whether the context of the survey in which New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale items are asked influence measured environmental concern. In this application the role that specific threatened or endangered species play in affecting responses to NEP Scale items is explored using a combination of non-parametric and parametric approaches. The results in this case suggest that context does influence stated general environmental attitudes, though the effects of context differ across NEP items.