Social values, environmental attitudes and environmental behavior among students in Greece, Cyprus and Switzerland


Published: Oct 15, 2020
Keywords:
Social values Individualism – collectivism environmental values New ecological paradigm
Αντωνία Παπαστυλιανού
Ευριπίδης Παπαδημητρίου
Abstract

environmental behavior and the various parameters that determine it constitute a broad area in which research has penetrated in recent years utilizing a host of research approaches and theories from the field, mainly social, and environmental psychology and sociology. The present study focuses on the above subject area, positing individual and
comparative questions and monitoring the way in which specific research models stand up to samples from different cultural environments. Findings from an empirical – comparative study conducted by the authors in university departments from three countries are presented; Greece, Cyprus and Switzerland (N = 669), in which the role that social values and environmental attitudes play in shaping environmental behavior were studied in particular. The research highlighted the decisive influence of specific social values and particularly ‘environmental values’ and those of Individualism and Collectivism. Significant individual differences were revealed between participants from the three countries not only in terms of their environmental behavior but also regarding the weight of each factor that affects this, as well as their environmental attitudes and the mediating role they play between values and behavior.

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