Effects of Social Media on the Environmental Protection Behaviour of the Public (Case Study: Protecting Zayandeh-Rood River Environment)

Abstract

Social media has quickly become an essential marketing and communication tool for private, public and non-governmental entities across the world to promote their organizational mission, daily events and publications. Many citizens use social media to post or share real time photos on a variety of environmental issues such as pollution or littering, forest fires, reported chemical spills in waterways, illegal dumping, and injured or deceased endangered animals. This simple, yet effective action can result in prompt awareness of an environmental incident and timely response from various agencies responsible for the environment. This paper presents a framework for evaluating the mechanisms that involve the public in environmental protection. It also investigates the role of social media in forming the environmental concepts. In this study, a systemic approach was adopted to investigate the environmental and social status of a target area and by preparing a suitable questionnaire and finally introducing theme and subtheme. According to the results, all the seven final themes showed the substantial impact of social media on attitude of the public and trend of participation in improving the status of Zayandeh-rood environment.