Relationships between Important Psychological Traits of Student and Water Conservation Behaviors

Abstract

The four main objectives of this research were: firstly, to investigate if students with different bio-social backgrounds, psychological characteristics and environmental information getting behaviors differed in their water conservation behaviors; secondly, to investigate if students with different psychological characteristics showed differences in their environmental information getting behaviors; and thirdly, to determine the major variables in predicting water conservation behaviors. The findings were as follows:

1. Bio-social backgrounds were not different in their water conservation behaviors.

2. In the whole group, students with high degree of moral reasoning, and high degree of future orientation and internal locus of control were not different: from the other groups in water conservation behaviors.

3. Students who had a high degree of future orientation showed higher environmental information getting behaviors than the opposite ones.

4. As predictive variables, psychological factors and environmental information getting behaviors together could predict 31.99% of water conservation behaviors in the whole group and 39.24% in students over 20 years of age. The major variables to predict water conservation behaviors were environmental information getting behaviors, internal locus of control, moral reasoning.