Environmental citizenship perception and behavior among university engineering students in the Marmara Region of Turkey

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the perception and behavior levels of environmental citizenship of university students between the ages of 18-25. The target population was selected as the students of engineering faculties in Istanbul and Sakarya provinces, which are in the Marmara Region of Turkey. In this scope, we develop a sophisticated questionnaire that allows some variables such as the socioeconomic structure and the educational status of the parents to assess the current environmental behavior and thoughtfulness of the individual and publish online to receive the response. We analyze the quantitative data using the descriptive technique. Exploratory factor analysis was used to detect the factors that underlie a dataset based on the correlations between questionnaire items. Independent t test and one-way of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the quantitative data. We determine that there is a significant difference among the students' environmental thought in terms of gender, the participation of voluntary environmental organizations, voluntary in the family, education level of father and the students' environmental behavior in terms of the education level of the mother. We also find that there is a significant difference between students studying in engineering faculties and environmental engineering students in terms of some environmental behavior.