Pro-Environmental Behavior

929 Words4 Pages
TITTLE Environmental issue is a mainstream topic around the globe. These event made scholars to describe our present period as a “new environmental age”, “an age of ecology” and an “age of risk”, “ in which the main threats to human societies stem from their relationship with the natural world” (Sutton 2004:15). Environmental issues affect everyone and the global population generally displays a pro-environmental behavior, however, there are various levels of responses and actions coming from individuals to address this kind of global concern. People are complex in nature and so with their behavior. This paper will dwell mostly on searching for answers to the questions: What causes an individual’s pro-environmental behavior? How do these…show more content…
The complexity of human behavior towards the environment can be understood in the influences that shapes their orientation, attitudes and beliefs. Political Science and Psychology scholars call these influences as socializing agents or agents of socialization (Berns 1993:49; Ranney 2003:56). These groups or agents play a part in socializing an individual that exerts influence in various ways and time (Berns 1993:49). According to Orville Brim, “socialization is the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills and character traits that enable them to participate as effective members of groups and society (Brim 1966:3). Austin Ranney pointed out that among the agents that political scientists considered as most important are families, schools, peer groups and the mass communication media (Ranney 2003:56). The family is where socialization primarily takes place. Rudolph Schaffer pointed out that the aim of socialization is to fit the individual and acquire the acceptable behavior into their society. Parents were then assigned “to act as agents the transmission of cultural norms and they do so by first introducing their children to the requirements of the family” (Schaffer 1996:…show more content…
In their study, Changing Learner Behavior through Environmental Education, Hungerford and Volk wrote that the primary goal of education is to shape human behavior. They added that societies throughout the world establish educational systems in order to develop citizens who will behave in desirable

More about Pro-Environmental Behavior

Open Document