Model Constructing Of Environmental Behavior Of College Students

With the deteriorating of global environment, the public's environmental behavior has become a hot issue in the field of social psychology overseas. However, the study of environmental behavior is almost empty in our country especially in the field of psychology. Though the general pattern of environmental behavior were studied by foreign researchers form different perspectives, none of them integrated more relevant variables, and a general pattern which reach the same conclusion is yet to be established. Base on the research status on environmental behavior, we choose this research subject.Think over workload of research, as well as for easy to measure, this study takes the using behavior of plastic bag of college students for example, aims at exploring the general pattern of plastic bags using behavior of college student.This study attempted to explore these questions: verify kind of value orientation which environmental behavior originate from; explore the relationship between value orientation, environmental belief, environmental risk perception, personal norm and environmental behavior; verify the moderating effect of perceived behavior control on the relationship between personal norm and environmental behavior.We investigated sophomores and juniors from 4 universities in Xiamen, 819 students participated in this study. Questionnaires in this study included value orientation scale, NEP scale, personal norm scale, environmental risk perception, plastic bag usage questionnaire, and so on.Study 1 was conducted to explore the relationship between value orientation, environmental belief, environmental risk perception, personal norm and environmental behavior. Base on exiting research findings and the results of correlation analysis and regression analysis, we applied the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to test the model. The model presented goodness-of-fit indexes that were acceptable. The results indicated that (1)altruistic values and biospheric values had a positive and significant influence on NEP, awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility; altruistic value had a positive and significant influence on environmental risk perception; altruistic values and biospheric values had a positive and significant influence on personal norms.(2)NEP and awareness of consequences had a positive and significant influence on ascription of responsibility; NEP, awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility had a positive and significant influence on environmental risk perception; awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility had a positive and significant influence on personal norms.(4)personal norms had a positive and significant influence on environmental behavior.Study 2 explores the moderating effect of perceived behavior control on the relationship between personal norm and environmental behavior. However, we did not find the moderating effect of perceived behavior control. When put perceived behavior control into the model established in study 1, we found that perceived behavior control can increase the interpretation of personal norms to environmental behavior, perceived behavior control had a negative and significant influence on personal norms and environmental behavior. Perceived behavior control influences on environmental behavior directly, and it can influences on environmental behavior through personal norms.On the basis of above 2 studies, we discussed the findings about the model of environmental behavior, pointed out the enlightenment for environmental education for out country from this research. The author analyzed the shortcomings of this research, proposed the problems that need further study.