A SURVEY OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES AND ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGE AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR AMONG CITIZENS OF URMIA, WEST AZERBAIJAN, IRAN

Year 2011, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 27 - 37, 01.06.2011

Amir Maleki Sara Karimzadeh

Abstract

Nowadays, the environmental issues and challenges, particularly "energy consumption behavior" has been the focus of attention for policy makers and scholars in the fields of sociology, environment study, management and so on. The change in the people's behavior towards the naturalist dimensions can be considered as one of the ways to avoid the damage to the environment and destruction of nature (Quimbita, 2005:1). Based on the theory of Reasoned Action of Fishbin and Ajzen (1975), it is assumed that there is a systematic model between the people's approach towards a certain issue and the related behavior towards that issue. On the other hand, scholars in the field of environment study such as Borden and Schettino (1979), Schahn and Holzer(1990), Kaiser et al (1999), and Bayard and Jolly (2006) believe that there is a relationship between environmental knowledge and significant environmental behavior. Considering the significance of the issues stated above, the present article attempts to shed light on energy consumption behavior and its possible correlation with environmental attitudes and environmental knowledge among the citizens of Urmia, West Azerbaijan, Iran. The research method is survey and the main tool for collecting data was questionnaire. Dunlop's NEP scale was used for measuring environmental attitudes and Salehi's Items was employed for measuring environmental knowledge. Statistical sample was consisting of 383 citizens who were selected using cluster sampling method. The results show: 1) the participants owned positive environmental attitude, 2) there was a statistically significant relationship between the environmental attitude and environmental behavior (energy consumption) of the participants, and 3) there was not any statistically significant relationships between environmental knowledge – either systematic knowledge or behavioral knowledge – and environmental behavior of the participants

Keywords

Environmental attitudes, Energy consumption Behavior, Environmental behavior (energy consumption), New Environmental Paradigm, Systematic environmental knowledge, Action related knowledge

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