Who cares about the environment?

ABSTRACT

Environmental behavior substantially differs among individuals depending on their environmental attitudes, connectivity to nature beliefs, and socioeconomic profile. People who adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle and those who are unconcerned about environmental protection represent population segments with diverse characteristics. Consequently, this study aims to identify homogeneous groups based on individuals’ environmental behavior. A total of 400 Greek citizens completed a self-report questionnaire. We used behavioral items adopted from previous studies to measure environmental behavior and background variables to assess the socio-demographic profile of the respondents. Additionally, we used the well-established measures of Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) and New Ecological Paradigm Scale (NEP) to measure people's relatedness with nature and their ecological beliefs separately. Multivariate Cluster Analysis results indicated that participants can be grouped into two broad segments, named moderate eco-friends and non-environmentalists. Individual differences between the clusters were detected with respect to gender, education, connectedness to nature and ecological worldview.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental behavior
• connectedness to nature
• ecological worldview
• moderate eco-friends
• non-environmentalists

Funding

The present work is part of a Ph.D study which is co-financed by the National Strategic Reference Framework (2014-2020), the European Social Fund and Greek Public Sector, through the action “Strengthening the human research potential” and the implementation of Operational Program “Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning” (MIS 5000432).