Values and Pro-Environmental Behaviors: A Study in Golestan Province Forest Parks

Introduction Human-nature interaction can be considered at the macro or micro levels. At the micro level, individual-level analysis is performed. The most important variables in this level include attitude, belief, motivation, perception, personality traits, specific behaviors, general worldview and values. Unlike other demographic variables such as environmental attitudes and behaviors, there has been little done on environmental values. One reason is that this is a new topic in environmental research because the study of human value orientations relate to contemporary environmental concerns. Environmental attitudes and values also play an important role in determining the tendency of people to perform an action towards environmental protection. Value orientations towards the environment can be separated to anthropocentric value orientation and non-anthropocentric ones. Furthermore, value orientations can be investigated in four levels, namely anthropocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism and Theocentrism. Studies have shown a positive relationship between ecocentric value orientation and environmental protection behaviors. Studies indicated that anthropocentric and biocentric value orientations can be predicted normative behaviors of forest parks visitors. For example, people with anthropocentric view are more likely opposed to conservation strategies. The present study was conducted to answer the question of what are the relationships between value orientations and environmentally friendly behaviors. 2-Methodology This study was conducted by survey research. The study population was people that have been in Golstan province forests parks for recreation and leisure. Using stratified random sampling, 100 people in each forest parks and totally 300 people were selected as sample. Data collection was conducted using a questionnaire. Two indicators were used to assess the environmental behaviors. One indicator for general environmentally friendly behavior and other for environmental practices in forest parks. The validity was confirmed by face validity and the reliability was assessed by calculating Cronbach's alpha. Study data were analyzed using SPSS statistical software. For data analysis, statistics such as mean, frequency, percentage, Analysis of variance, correlation and T-test were used. 3-Discussion Forest parks visitors view on anthropocentric perspective are below average and may be evaluated moderately downward the mean. Ecocentric view is slightly more than the average and may be close to the maximum possible score. Therefore, it can be evaluated as good. Pearson correlation coefficients indicate that there is no significant correlation between age and value orientation towards environmental. But there is a significant positive correlation between ecocentric and Theocentric value orientations. T-test indicated that there is no significant difference between men and women and also between married and single persons in terms of value orientation towards environment. But there is a positive and significant correlation between environmentally friendly behaviors and ecocentric view. Also, no significant correlation was found between antropocentric and Thoeocentric views and environmentally friendly practices. In contrast, there is a significant positive relationship between ecocentric and Theocentric value orientations with environmentally actions referred in Forest Parks. Thus, it could be expected that people with better environmentally friendly practices also show better environmental practices in forest parks. 4-Conclusion This study showed that visitors of forest parks are stronger in the Theocentric value orientation than ecocentric and anthropocentric ones. Also, the anthropocentric is the weakest value orientation toward the environment. It should be noted that the low weight of anthropocentric value orientation among the study population is not an enough reason to have environmentally friendly behavior. Environmental behavior can be formed on any value orientation towards the environment. Nevertheless, the findings of this study showed that environmentally friendly behavior is independent of the anthropocentric value orientation. These findings confirm the importance of avoiding anthropocentric value orientation to have environmentally friendly behaviors.