Abstract
The Evaluation of the Environmental Attitudes of Students Studying at Tourism Faculties in the Context of the ‘‘New Environmental Paradigm’’: The Case of Eskisehir
The environmental worldview of the new generation is significant in shaping the future of the planet. In this context, it is a must to understand how sustainability and environment-related courses given in tourism faculties, as in many different programs of universities, affect students' environmental attitudes and behaviors. With regard to this notion, it is aimed to determine the environmental world view of the students studying in the tourism faculties of the universities in Eskisehir in this research. In this framework, it was examined whether there was a significant difference in the environmental attitudes of the students according to the type of education they received, and the socio-demographic factors affecting the environmental attitudes of the students were investigated. The survey technique, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the research. The survey; which was prepared online; was applied to the students studying in the Tourism Faculties of the universities in Eskisehir with the help of the academics in the relative departments in the spring semester of the 2020-2021 academic year, on 15.05.2021-15.06.2021, with the convenience sampling technique, and a total of 246 usable data were obtained. In the analysis of the data, factor analysis, t-test, and ANOVA tests were used besides descriptive statistics. The factor analysis results reveal that the New Environmental Paradigm scale is gathered in three dimensions as “environment-centered approach”, “balanced growth approach” and “human-centered approach”. In the ANOVA test results, it was determined that there was a significant difference between the environmental attitudes of the participants and the departments from which they received an education. Results indicate that the environmental attitudes of Tourism Guidance students are higher than that of Tourism Management, Gastronomy, and Culinary Arts students. Nonetheless, it was concluded that socio-demographic variables did not have any effect on determining students' environmental attitudes. The study ends with various suggestions for increasing the environmental attitudes of students studying in different programs of tourism faculties.
Keywords
Environmental Attitude, New Environmental Paradigm, Faculty of Tourism, Students, Eskisehir
