Knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards the environmental issues: Case of Northern Cyprus

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the knowledge of students as well as the relationship between attitudes and behaviour also based on gender towards the environmental issues. For this purpose, a survey study was conducted using a group of students who are the eighth grade students at a secondary school in the North Cyprus. This study was performed in the second half term in the 2016-2017 academic year. In the study, the research data was gathered with "Environmental Knowledge Test", "Environmental Attitude Scale" and "Environmental Behaviour Scale" developed by Cömert (2011). Furthermore, in the analysis of data, the descriptive statistics, independent t-test and correlation analysis were used. According to the results, the majority of the eighth grade students have misconceptions and a lack of knowledge about the environmental issues. Additionally, we concluded that environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of participants have not a significant difference based on the gender. The results revealed that the environmental knowledge of students and environmental attitudes have a moderately positive relationship.