The predictors of pro-environmental attitudes: religiousness, ecological dominance orientation and nature connectedness

Date

2024-9-3

Author

Özdemir, Ezgişan

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The aim of this thesis is to examine the relationships between religiousness, ecological dominance orientation and nature connectedness with pro-environmental attitudes. Our world is rapidly changing in a negative way with global warming and climate change. It is important to take sustainable measures. People's pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors are closely related to the concept of sustainability. The study was conducted with 223 undergraduate students and 54 non-student adults from Northern Cyprus. Different four surveys and demographic questions were assessed. This thesis work hypothesizes that (1) there is a significant relationship between religiousness and pro-environmental attitudes: 1(a) intrinsic religious orientation is positively related to pro-environmental attitudes, 1(b) extrinsic religious orientation has a negative relationship with pro-environmental attitudes, 1(c) quest religious orientation is positively associated with environmental attitudes, 1(d) fundamentalist religious orientation is negatively associated with environmental attitudes; (2) there is a positive relationship between nature connectedness and pro-environmental attitudes: 2(a) feeling integrated with nature is positively related with pro-environmental attitudes, 2(b) feeling part of nature is positively related with pro-environmental attitudes; (3) individuals with a strong belief in ecological dominance tend to exhibit less pro-environmental attitudes; (4) nature connectedness (integration with nature, part of nature) is expected to mediates the relationship between religiousness dimensions and pro-environmental attitudes; (5) ecological dominance orientation is expected to mediates the relationship between religiousness dimensions and pro-environmental attitudes. The findings indicate that intrinsic religious orientation is positively associated with pro-environmental attitudes. Conversely, extrinsic religious orientation is negatively associated with these attitudes. In addition, quest religious orientation and fundamentalist religious orientation had no relationship with pro-environmental attitudes. Moreover, the mediation analysis revealed that the sense of being part of nature (PON) significantly mediates the relationship between intrinsic religious orientation and pro-environmental attitudes, indicating that individuals with high intrinsic religious orientation tend to develop more pro-environmental attitudes through their sense of belonging to nature. Moreover, ecological dominance orientation showed weak negative relationship with pro-environmental attitudes for students sample but not for non-student adults sample. The study's contributions, limitations, and conclusions were all discussed.

Subject Keywords

Pro-environmental attitudes, Religious orientation, Nature connectedness, Ecological dominance orientation, Sustainability

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111595

Collections

Northern Cyprus Campus, Thesis