Identifying Effective Factors in Environmental Behavior of Lake Urmia Basin Residents: Using Factor Analysis

Most of the environmental threates and resources depletion are direct consequences of human behavior, so altering the behavior could decrease environmental problems. In this regard, identification of the effective factors on behavior would be the first step. Lake Urmia as a public good, needs public contribution to prevent its more deterioration that could have serious impacts on social welfare. Main purpose of this study is identifying effective factors in environmental behavior of Lake Urmia basin inhabitants using factor analysis. According to the results, six selected factors were explaining 75 percent of the environmental behavior of respondents. These factors from most to least importance were named as use and non-use motivations (15.2 percent), interested decision makers (14.7 percent), environmental catastrophe (13.2 percent), ecologists (11.9 percent), Urban environmentalists (10.5 percent) and human exemptionalism (9 percent).