Transforming discourse in practice: An analysis of motives and concerns influencing pro-environmental behaviour

Abstract

Environmental education in the context of business schools, is still maturing, and its approach often subsumed into a single discipline and with little scientific production in the area. This study aims to analyze the environmental motives and concerns relate to the prospect of action by students of management in the face of practices environmental conservation. It was used as main concerns with the scale of the environmental consequences of Schultz (2001) and the scale of pro-environmental grounds by Thompson and Barton (1994). The research included the participation of 219 university students in a metropolitan area of northeastern Brazil, with data being worked with SPSS and Amos, version 18.0, modules descriptive statistics, nonparametric tests, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation and regression binary logistic. A negative correlation between the apathetic motives and biospheric concern, a positive correlation between ecocentric motives and biospheric concern and a positive correlation between the ecocentric motives and altruistic concerns. In turn, there was still a biosphere concern and ecocentric motives with a predisposition to action for environmental preservation. The results of this research can provide educators a direction that the memorandum ecocentric motives and biospheric concerns need to be encouraged, aimed at sensitizing students to transform the rhetoric in favor of the environment in practice. The relations found demonstrate important aspects of understanding human behavior in the face of environmental issues. For a better understanding of the relationships highlighted in this study, it is important to apply other instruments with different samples formed by students from other geographical regions, different courses and institutions of higher education.