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Students' Attitudes and Behaviours in the Context of Environmental Issues

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse attitudes and behaviours of the student population (N=1347) of the University of Rijeka towards environmental issues. Data were collected during the summer semester of the 2015/2016 academic year. Paper seeks to explore the connection between the following measured concepts: socio-ecological orientations, pro- environmental behaviour, ethos types, and preference for the development paradigm, as well as the differences in relation to independent variables. Research results reveal that students predominantly prefer the holistic ethos type of responsibility (82.2%) and that the majority of students still support the new environmental paradigm, i.e. the claim “slower economic development, accompanied by stronger environmental protection”, which is consistent with the results from other studies. Furthermore, contingency analysis revealed significant associations with regards to gender and year of study. Males mostly prefer the egocentric ethos type of responsibility as well as the claim “faster economic development, accompanied by greater environmental pollution”, while females mostly prefer the holistic ethos type and the new environmental paradigm. Students who are at the beginning of their higher education prefer egocentric, utilitarian and biocentric ethos types, while students who are in their final years of study prefer the holistic ethos type of responsibility and the new environmental paradigm. As for socio-ecological orientations, statistically significant differences were found with regards to almost all independent variables: ethos types of responsibility, gender, year of study, field of study, preference for the development paradigm and the level of education of the father, while mother’s level of education was not statistically significant. Statistically significant differences were also found with regards to pro-environmental behaviour scale on which female participants, students in their final years of study and those who prefer the new environmental paradigm rank higher in comparison to male participants, students at the beginning of their study and those who prefer the claim “faster economic development, accompanied by greater environmental pollution”. In other words, it seems that the duration of study and gender are related to an increased sense of responsibility towards the environment, which is an important finding that should influence educational policies.

students ; socio-ecological orientations ; ethos types ; development paradigms ; pro-environmental behaviour ; education

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