Measuring the employees’ environmental attitude of agricultural knowledge-based companies based on sociocultural components: a case study from Iran

Abstract

Environmental attitude is a crucial component in environmental psychology. It is a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating the natural environment with some degree of favor or disfavor. The main aim of this study was to determine the environmental attitude levels of the employees of the agricultural knowledge-based companies based on sociocultural variables by binomial logistic regression in an inferential design. The research population was composed of the employees of the agricultural knowledge-based companies (N = 175). In this study, a census method was used. The research instrument was a self-designed questionnaire which composed of three sections. The first section was related to employees’ demographic and sociocultural characteristics. The second and third sections were to measure employees’ environmental knowledge and attitude. NEP scale was used to measure environmental attitude. The SPSS20 and R software packages were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that governmental policies, mass media, membership in the NGOs, educational level and training have significant effect on employees’ attitudes to the environment protection. Therefore, it is concluded that environmental attitude of agricultural knowledge-based companies’ employees is influenced by a set of factors. These factors alone cannot change employees’ attitude toward sustainability and environment. Accordingly, necessary and appropriate conditions should be provided to change the environmental attitude of agricultural knowledge-based companies’ employees. These conditions will be provided by government policies, types of mass media, various training and employee participation in NGOs.