‘Whose environment is it anyway?’ A study of environmental attitudes and behaviours among Indian female college students

Pages: 67-72
Kanika K. Ahuja and Megha Dhillon (Department of Psychology, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, Delhi)

This generation is facing mammoth global environmental problems of shrinking natural resources, global warming, pollution and consumerism. Can people’s ecological behaviour be understood by examining their attitudes towards the environment? The present research sought to investigate the relationship between environmental attitudes and environmental behaviours amongst female undergraduates in Delhi. Sixty nine participants filled out The New Ecological Paradigm (Revised) (Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000) and General Ecological Behaviour (Davis, Green, & Reed, 2009) to measure environmental attitudes and behaviour respectively. Results indicated that both attitudes and behaviours towards the environment were average in strength. However, the relationship between attitudes and behaviours was negligible (r=0.02, p=0.870). Implications, limitations of the study and future directions are discussed.