Abstract
The current study examines connectedness to nature feelings, environmental concerns and environmental behavior in a Greek population. The structure of these constructs and their relations were assessed with the help of Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Data were collected from two random Greek citizen samples using questionnaire survey method. We used the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) to measure connectivity to nature feelings and Environmental Motives Scale (EMS) to assess peoples’ environmental concern in both studies. Items from previous research were adopted to measure peoples’ environmental behavior. In study 1, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) suggested that connectedness to nature is a uni-dimensional measure, while environmental behavior and environmental concerns are multidimensional constructs. In study 2, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirmed the proposed structure of all constructs in the study. The SEM model tested the associations among connectedness to nature, environmental concern, and the behavioral domains and showed an acceptable fit. The results indicated that, after controlling for age, gender and education, connectedness to nature, egoistic and biospheric concerns were significantly related to personal practices, while altruistic concerns had a significant but negative correlation with personal practices. Only egoistic concerns showed a significant and positive relationship with environmental action. The reported findings have implications on policy related to the promotion of pro-environmental behavior and contribute to social science research that aims to understand human responses to a changing environment.
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Notes
Two dominant approaches have been used to study environmental behaviors: one focused on impact, and a second focused on intention (Larson et al. 2015). The intention perspective refers to behaviors that contribute to the sustainability of the natural environment and emphasizes the outcome of the behavior, rather than the motivation behind it. The impact-oriented approach makes no assumptions about underlying motivations and focuses on behaviors that move the individual in the direction of a smaller impact (Poortinga et al. 2004).
Denial factor reflects a denial that environmental problems exist. Interpersonal Influences pertain to the difficulty of changing one’s behavior, potential risks inherent in change, lack of time, financial stake and other barriers. Conflicting Goals and Aspirations barrier refers to positive environmental behavior change which is deemed incompatible with other valued goals. Tokenism represents actions that the person has already adopted and contentment with current behaviors. These barriers were mentioned for literature review reasons but there were not part of the study’s objective. For an overview see Gifford et al. (2011) and Gifford & Chen (2017).
Those citizens who accepted to take part in the study received their printed questionnaires through the local post- office.
There are “A Priori” Statistical Remedies and “Post Hoc” Statistical Remedies to test for CMB. “A Priori” Statistical Remedies include the Directly Measured Latent Method, Instrumental Variable and Ideal Marker Variable techniques, while “Post Hoc” Statistical Remedies refer to Unmeasured Latent Factor Model, Non-Ideal Marker Variable, and Harman’s Single Factor Tests. For a detailed description of each procedure see Podsakoff et al. (2003, 2012).
The results are common method bias adjusted. We compared the unconstrained with the zero- constrained model: Δχ2 = 112.86; Δdf = 26; p = .00). The detailed results of the pooled CFA in the merged sample are not presented here but are available on request.
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Acknowledgments
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).
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.
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Anastasia Gkargkavouzi contributed to conception and design, the collection of the data, analysis, and interpretation of data, and drafting the article.
Stefanos Paraskevopoulos contributed to the drafting of the data.
Steriani Matsiori contributed to the drafting of the data and supervised the entire study procedure.
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Author Gkargkavouzi Anastasia declares that she has no conflict of interest. Author Paraskevopoulos Stefanos declares that he has no conflict of interest. Author Matsiori Steriani declares that she has no conflict of interest.
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Gkargkavouzi, A., Paraskevopoulos, S. & Matsiori, S. Assessing the structure and correlations of connectedness to nature, environmental concerns and environmental behavior in a Greek context. Curr Psychol 40, 154–171 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9912-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9912-9