Ecological knowledge and connectedness to nature as predictors of farmers’ ecological attitudes

Abstract

Environmental attitudes are one of the determinants of farmers? ecologically responsible behaviour. However, it is not easy to determine factors which influence individuals? environmental attitudes. The literature suggests the existence of a number of influencing factors. In this paper, the environmental attitudes of the farmers? in Vojvodina have been tested in relation to environmental knowledge and connectedness to nature, which are important elements of environmental awareness. As far as the authors know, these variables have not yet been linked to the concept of the new ecological paradigm (NEP), and this paper provides new insight into the relations between the NEP scale and the selected elements of environmental awareness. A multiple regression was conducted to see if environmental knowledge and connectedness to nature predicted the environmental attitudes. The results show that both variables explain 9.6% variance in NEP values. The results show that the farmers? environmental knowledge and their connectedness to nature are statistically significant, but in a small percentage explain the achieved values on the NEP scale. ?herefore, one can say that the tested variables are predictors of environmental attitudes, but they are also influenced by other factors which need to be investigated in the future researches.