The analysis of pro-environmental behaviour based on ecological worldviews, environmental training/ knowledge and goal frames

Abstract

The environmental dimension of the concept of sustainability has become a topic that has been frequently researched in the fields of psychology, sociology and organisational behaviour. Designed on the basis of previous studies, this study aims at explaining pro-environmental behaviour based on ecological worldviews of individuals and goals that the individuals desire to achieve with their environmental knowledge. Accordingly, two separate experimental studies, consisting of 109 high school students and 236 college students, were designed. Participants’ level of knowledge was manipulated through environmental training, while their personal goals were manipulated so as to create certain conditions in order to lead individuals to achieve specific goals. The ecological worldviews of students were obtained by means of the new ecological paradigm scale. The validity of this scale was tested in two samples with multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to explain pro-environmental behaviour which was determined as ‘dropping litter in to a recycle bin’ in the first study and ‘participating in an environmental event’ in the second study. As a result of the first study, it was observed that one-unit change in the post-training views of the individual increases the probability by 11.1 times in exhibiting pro-environmental behaviour. Furthermore, the results showed that ‘gain-goals’ oriented individuals would exhibit pro-environmental behaviour 7.3 times more than those in the control group and ‘normative-goals’ oriented individuals would exhibit pro-environmental behaviour 3.5 times greater than those in the control group. It was estimated that the students who had environmental training would exhibit pro-environmental behaviour 2 times more than those who without. It was determined that environmental training had a significant effect only on voluntary behaviour when pro-environmental behaviour was classified as voluntary, gain or normative goal oriented behaviours. Accordingly, it was also estimated that the individuals who had environmental training would exhibit voluntary pro-environmental behaviour 4.7 times more than those who did not have any training. Training and goal-frames were treated to the subjects, so real responses of the subjects could be examined to the environmental training and goal-frame stimulation. So the main contribution of this research to the literature is enabling observation real pro-environmental behaviour of individuals in terms of interventions.