An Analysis of Social Factors Influencing Students’ Environmental Attitudes and Performance

Introduction Recent developments in theory and research give hope for building the understanding needed to effectively alter human behaviors that contribute to environmental problems. Behavior change strategies that are consistent with people’s knowledge and awareness of global environmental changes are therefore necessary in order for a sustainable policy to be developed. Environmental attitudes are conceptualized in terms of attitude theory as being composed of beliefs and affects toward an object .Because attitudes are viewed as hypothetical mental states underlying constructs which influence a variety of verbal statements, no single verbal statement yields a particularly good measure of attitude. Sociologists Dunlap and VanLiere(1978) have hypotheses sized a new environmental paradigm(NEP) in contrast to what Pirages and Ehrlich(1974) call our society’s Dominant Social Paradigm(DSP), i.e., traditional values and beliefs such as economic growth, material progress and technological optimism. The NEP represents a constellation of values, attitudes, or beliefs which are ‘perhaps best captured by spaceship earth metaphor’. NEP scale (Dunlap et al., 2000) was used to measure environmental attitudes. The NEP addresses four aspects of an environmental worldview with three statements for each: the realization of limits to growth, anti – anthropocentrism, belief in the fragility of the balance of nature, rejection of human exceptionalism. Attitudes were measured with five – point, Likert type scales ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Among twelve statements, there are nine positively (pro – environmentally) narrated statements and three negatively narrated statements. Sustainable development is a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs, to overcome environmental problems. Furthermore, sustainable environment requires manpower with compatible attitudes towards the environment and sustainability. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to evaluate the environmental attitudes and behaviors of university students. Materials & Methods The present study utilized survey method and the main tool for data collection is questionnaire. Given that the focus of the study is to assess student’ environmental attitude and behaviors, the unit of analysis in this study is university student and level of analysis is micro. With calculations of Cochran formula, 406 of 10313 students were determined in seven state universities in Mazandaran province. A Survey method was applied and data-gathering tool was questionnaire, the validity of which was achieved by applying face validity. To this end, 406 students of different universities (including Mazandaran University, Babol Industrial Noshirvani University, Sari University of Agricultural Sciences, and Babol University of Medical Sciences) were selected using stratified sampling. A total of 406 students were interviewed face to face, using questionnaire. Having examined the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, the main data sets were collected and analyzed. Four hypotheses were examined. Data entry, editing and final processing was performed by SPSS software. Discussion of Results & Conclusions The results of this research showed that 53 percent of the surveyed students used public media as the main source of environmental information. Urban student’ attitudes were more favorable to the environment. Environmental attitudes and behaviors of the sample students were not different in terms of gender. There was a weak relationship between environmental attitudes and behavior. Also, environmental attitudes and behaviors were different by the family ‘environmental performance, and informational resources related with environmental attitude and behavior. In conclusion, it can be said that based on the descriptive and inferential findings while students attitudes toward the environment seem to be positive, their environmental performance is not and should be changed, if we want to achieve to a sustainable development. Therefore, in any major decision and national policy aiming at sustainable development, we should consider the factors that reinforce environmental responsible behavior. By helping students to recognize the importance of environment, we can boost the spirit of protection of the environment and increase a sense of responsibility among them