Abstract
Religiosity is one of the most prominent and extensive social factors influencing one’s behavior; however, there is a lack of research analyzing the religiosity impact on pro-environmental behavior, particularly for women in rural areas. To narrow the research gap, this study established a theoretical research model by incorporating religiosity into the Theory of Planned Behavior to explore factors affecting rural female facilitators’ pro-environmental behavior. The extended Theory of Planned Behavior model was consequently tested by empirical data collected from 110 rural female facilitators in Qom Province in the center of Iran. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that subjective norms and environmental attitude were positively and significantly related to pro-environmental intentions. In addition, pro-environmental intentions and perceived behavioral control were found to be significantly associated with pro-environmental behaviors. The results revealed that there was a direct and indirect relationship between religiosity and pro-environmental behaviors via perceived behavioral control. In addition, there was an indirect relationship between religiosity and pro-environmental intentions via subjective norms and environmental attitudes. Therefore, this study revealed that religiosity as social pressure plays an important role in determining pro-environmental intentions and behaviors among rural female facilitators in Iran. Thus, in order to promote pro-environmental behavior, the religiosity aspects should be considered and people should be stimulated to act in a more environmentally friendly mode via religious prism.
Highlights
Today, the world faces several environmental problems such as air pollution, water scarcity, and global warming, which are jeopardizing planet Earth’s welfare and security
38.5% of the rural female facilitators participated in the activities and societies associated with the environment and the rest were not involved in any environmental activity and society
The internal factor as environmental attitude and social norms is important for intentions to behave in a more environmentally friendly mode
Summary
The world faces several environmental problems such as air pollution, water scarcity, and global warming, which are jeopardizing planet Earth’s welfare and security. Religiosity and Pro-environmental Behaviors of environmental problems and their harmful effects on Iran and other countries of the world reflect the necessity of finding immediate solutions. Since most environmental problems of today are mainly the results of human activities and actions, the implementation of the possible solutions to these growing problems calls for a behavioral change and complete people participation (Onel and Mukherjee, 2015). Many environmental problems are directly linked to human behavior (Steg and Vlek, 2009; Hirsch, 2010), their solutions depend on changing this behavior and finding behavioral solutions (Hirsch, 2010; Ramkissoon et al, 2013; Steg et al, 2014). The identification and analysis of the determinants of people’s pro-environmental behaviors are substantially important (Mancha and Yoder, 2015; Bergek and Mignon, 2017; Ramkissoon et al, 2018; Karimi, 2019; Karimi et al, 2021b). Researchers have explored various external, personal, psychological, and social factors (Gifford and Nilsson, 2014; Karimi, 2019; Kumar, 2019; Wang et al, 2019; Karimi and Saghaleini, 2021b), but an important factor, which is religiosity, has been scarcely analyzed (Ghazali et al, 2018)
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