The Ecological Behaviour of Community in Preserving Land Use in Coastal Areas of Parepare

Abstract

Abstract: In 2011, the number of population of Pare-Pare City is around 130, 582 people which are spread out over four districts in the city of Pare-Pare. Most of the districts are located in the coastal region. The data illustrate that the coastal region in Pare-pare seems increasingly pressured by high population density in coastal areas prone to environmental degradation. From these communities, it seems that they are more likely to behave non-ecologically, such as throwing garbage in water bodies, building a house on the water, diminishing mangrove zones and various trends of environmental degradation which were caused by human action itself. This study use quantitative approach and hypotheses testing combined with survey method that uses questionnaire instruments. Instruments that used in this study were developed by the researchers. They include several questionnaires such as those of community's ecological behavior, their knowledge about environment, local wisdom, locus of control and their environmental attitude. Moreover, based on SEM analysis method, it can be concluded that the variables of environmental knowledge (X1), local wisdom (X2) and locus control (X3) have direct and significant impacts toward the environmental attitude (Y1). Furthermore, those variables also have similar impacts to the ecological behavior (Y2), whereas the variables of environmental attitude (Y1) do not have direct impact to the ecological behavior (Y2). This is shown with the significance value p-value>0.05. © 2014 Asian Network for Scientific Information.