Are University Students Willing to Participate in Environmental Protection Activities (EPAs)? – Sub-dimensions of Ecological Intelligence as Predictors

Abstract

Ecological intelligence is a comprehensive understanding that aims to create an awareness regarding how human activities affect ecosystems and to promote preventing unconscious consumption behaviors that would lead to a sustainable life. It enables us to take social, economic and environmental responsibility, also to act cooperatively and sensitively against ecological problems. All this would pave the way for maintaining strong global sustainability in our ecological objectives. This study explores the levels of ecological intelligence (LoEI) of university students; it also investigates the role of the sub-dimensions of ecological intelligence in predicting future participation in environmental protection activities (EPAs). The data were collected via ecological intelligence scale (EIS) and written open-response assessment (WORA) form by using a sample of 179 students. According to the results, the model to predict participation in EPAs indicated that a good discriminative ability with a prediction accuracy of 79.3%. We found that the most significant variables for the prediction of willingness to participate were ecologically conscious purchasing behavior (ECPB), ecological sensitivity (ES), ecological knowledge sharing (EKS) among the sub-dimensions of the EIS. This study is an important contribution to solve environmental problems by developing an ecological intelligence responding to the individual, social and economic needs of the next generation.