Environmental Awareness, Concern, Attitude and Behavior of University Students: A Comparison Across Academic Disciplines

Abstract

Environmental issues such as global warming, air pollution and ozone depletion have become global challenges. However, environmental awareness, environmental concern, environmental attitude and environmental behavior of individuals, as well as their academic background knowledge, are potential factors that may help in coping with these challenges. Here, we evaluated environmentalawareness, concern, attitude and behavior of university students across the five academic disciplines including arts & humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, biological sciences and environmental sciences. Further, we investigated how environmental-awareness, concern, and attitude influence the environmental behavior of individuals. Data was collected from 824 students of two public and two private sector universities through a self-administered questionnaire. The level of environmental awareness, environmental concern and environmental behavior of university students were found significantly high, whereas, level of environmental attitude was significantly low. Levels of environmental awareness, environmental concern and environmental behavior for all the five disciplines were found adequately high, but the level of environmental attitude was high for only two groups, i.e. physical sciences and biological sciences, and, low for three other groups. The group of biological sciences was ranked at top in all the four cases of awareness, concern, attitude and behavior. Moreover, the effects of environmental awareness and environmental concern on environmental behavior were found significantly positive, whereas the effect of environmental attitude was significantly negative.

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