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This chapter discusses the empirical social research of value change in Europe. It first defines the concepts of ‘value’ and ‘value orientation’ and then examines Ronald Inglehart's theories and findings on value change. The chapter also presents the research carried out by sociologist Helmut Klages on value change in West Germany.

The role and position of materiality is — perhaps surprisingly — deeply divisive among both scholars and activists concerned with environmental sustainability. On the one hand is an account – often rooted in Ronald Inglehart’s postmaterialist values thesis but also reflected in the “eco-modernism” of authors including Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus – that minimizes the role of “objective” material conditions and practices in favor of “subjective” values. On the other hand is an account that reverses this relationship. This chapter argues for a conception of materiality and material practices that rejects this subjective/objective divide as a lens for understanding contemporary environmental politics. “New materialism” offers promising resources for this pursuit of a new understanding of environmental politics, but also contains potential pitfalls identified in this chapter.

Geert Hofstede, Ronald Inglehart, and Shalom Schwartz are the main contributors to the empirical analysis of values through survey research. Hofstede, looking at culture from the perspective of management sciences, has identified four main axes of differentiation: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity. Inglehart, a political scientist who has overseen the World Values Survey since 1990, has located values along two main axes: one ranging from traditional to secular-rational values; and the other ranging from survival to self-expression values. Schwartz has oriented cultures around three axes: autonomy versus embeddedness, egalitarianism versus hierarchy, and harmony versus mastery.

The interim remarks take a step back from the hustle and bustle of politics to reflect on the forces that supported the rise of environmentalism. The chapter discusses transnational trends such as the growing prominence of post-material values, new ideas about health and the declining significance of industry in Western economies. A number of specific German conditions underscored the trend. Activists in the post-1968 tradition recast the environmental crisis in Marxist terms. Ambitious politicians embraced environmental causes to advance their careers. Environmentalism also helped to cope with a sense of insecurity that was fuelled both by the Cold War and Germany's deeply troubling past. Over time, German businessmen realized that a commitment to green values met nicely with its commitment to cutting-edge engineering. There was also an element of luck. For all the supporting conditions, it was completely unexpected that so many things came together in a spectacular boom of environmentalism in the 1980s.