Index of Environmental Awareness in Russia - MIMIC Approaches for Different Economic Situations

TL;DR

This study develops an index of environmental awareness in Russian regions using search engine data and MIMIC modeling, analyzing its variation over 2014-2015 and exploring the environmental Kuznets Curve.

Contribution

It introduces a novel MIMIC-based index of environmental awareness derived from search data, linking economic factors and regional environmental consciousness in Russia.

Findings

Regions' environmental awareness varies between 2014 and 2015.

The index correlates with economic indicators and the RUR devaluation.

Evidence regarding the Environmental Kuznets Curve is discussed.

Abstract

The paper addresses the issue of environmental awareness in the regions of the Russian Federation. Russia provides an important study area to investigate the relationship between economic development and environmental consciousness in general. This paper introduces an index of environmental awareness, which is derived as a latent variable from various categories of search entries in Yandex, the prominent Russian search engine, during two periods in years 2014 and 2015. These indicators are presumably dependent on certain causes, which are also integrated into the model. The resulting Multiple Indicators-Multiple Causes model allows to estimate the proposed index of environmental awareness and to rank the Russian regions for each period. Comparing the results of 2014 and 2015 is especially interesting, because of the RUR devaluation at the end of 2014. In additional, we answer the question of the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve with respect to environmental understanding.