Examining the Mediating Role of Altruism in the Relationship between Empathic Tendencies, the Nature Relatedness, and Environmental Consciousness

Abstract

A study was conducted using a correlational screening model to deter­mine the mediating effect of altruism in the relationship between em­pathic tendencies, the nature relatedness and environmental conscious­ness. The participants of the study, selected via random cluster sampling design, are composed of 305 pre-school teachers working in pre-schools and kindergartens in a city located in Turkey’s Aegean region. The ‘Em­pathic Tendency Scale’, ‘Altruism Scale’, ‘Nature Relatedness Scale’, and ‘Environmental Consciousness Scale’ were used as data collection tools. The analyses of the sub-purposes were carried out using the PROCESS macro (Model 4) developed by Andrew Hayes using the SPSS infrastruc­ture. When the study results were examined, the indirect effects of the empathic tendency on nature relatedness and environmental conscious­ness were found to be significant. Thus, altruism was the mediator for the relationship between the empathic tendency and nature relatedness (β=.13, 95% BCA CI [.08;.19]) and for the relationship between emphatic tendency and environmental consciousness (β=.36, %95 BCA CI [.18;.57]).