Relationship between Environmental Awareness, Information Seeking Behaviour, and Attitude of Students

This study aimed to conduct a path analysis of the relationship between environmental awareness, -seeking behavior, and the attitude undertaken by the survey method. The target population consisted of M.Sc. and PhD students of two colleges at Tehran university, including the agriculture and natural resources college and environmental science college in 2017-2018 (N=1342). Using the Cochran formula, the sample size was determined as 150 people, and stratified proportional methods were applied as a sampling method. The research instrument was a questionnaire whose content validity was confirmed by a panel of experts, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient approved its reliability. The results showed that students had moderate attitudes toward the environment. It was also found that the perspectives of participants were not significantly different regarding gender, place of living, and educational level, but in terms of the college of education, the students of environment college significantly had a more favorable attitude toward the environment. The result of the correlation analysis indicated that attitude toward the environment had a significant relationship with information-seeking behavior and students' environmental awareness. The finding of path analysis showed that two variables of information-seeking behavior and ecological awareness explained 82 percent of attitudes toward the environment. So, increasing people's knowledge and awareness is essential for changing their behavior and participation in environmental protection. Besides, students' most important information resource about the environment was the Internet.