Relationship between Conservation and Attitude towards Plastic Footprint
Many people want to aid in environmental conservation; however, very few individuals actually take the necessary steps to remedy the situation. For example, out of thousands of Australians who reported that environmental conservation was a serious issue, less than 20 individuals actually confessed to activity avoiding plastic material in their day to day lives (Dilkes-Hoffman et al., 2019). Most people want to help with environmental conservation; however, very few individuals are willing to sacrifice convenience and comfort to accomplish this. Environmental conversation is considered to be the combination of a series of transformative actions directed towards the prevention of ecosystem collapse and loss of species due to human activities like pollution and deforestation. Plastic footprint on the other hand refers to the amount of plastic waste that a person contributes to the global trash pile within a given time frame (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly or annually).
According to Schwartz (2012), there are certain basic value that determine the behavior of human being. Schwartz believes that these basic values transcend basic human emotion and are responsible for how people act in different situation. For example, a person may be afraid to enter a burning building but the need to help those inside (benevolence) will cause that person to overcome his/her fear and enter the burning structure with the hope of rescuing those trapped inside (self-transcendence) (Schwartz, 2012). Similarly, when it comes to environmental conservation there are some basic human values that determine whether or not a person is committed to that cause. Under Schwartz theory of values, a person’s approach toward conservation is directly related to his views on tradition, conformity, and security. As such, the approaches people take towards conservation are directly linked to how they internalize matters of tradition, security, and conformity.
It is expected that a person who abides to the traditional way of like will be more inclined towards environmental conservation. For example, Maasai communities in Kenya and Tanzania are dedicated to the protection of wildlife from poaching because they feel the animals are an extension of their culture, heritage, and identity as pastoralists. On the other hand, a person who easily conforms to what is trending or considered acceptable will have a society-driven attitude towards environmental conservation. Making it difficult for such a person to stand up against things that are harmful to the environment simply because they are socially acceptable. The need for security is viewed in most cases to favor conservation because it opposes new and unfamiliar behavior or practices that create uncertainties. However, security can also be seen to oppose conservation in cases where new technology can be used to better human lives at the expense of environmental integrity.
In this research study the focus will be on exploring the relationship between individuals’ attitude towards plastic footprint and: conservation, tradition, conformity, and security. The first objective is to evaluate how increment or decrement in attitude towards plastic footprint impacts on conservation, tradition, conformity, and security. The second objective is to discern how conservation, tradition, conformity, and security relate with each other. The following hypotheses were formulated to examine the central focus in this study.
1.High scores on attitudes towards plastic footprint will have a negative relationship with scores on conservation
2.High scores on attitudes towards plastic footprint will have a negative relationship with scores on tradition
3.High scores on attitudes towards plastic footprint will have a positive relationship with scores on conformity
4.High scores on attitudes towards plastic footprint will have a negative relationship with scores on security
Method
Subjects
The participants selected for this study were randomly selected from first year students at Gene University. 65 participants in total were chosen for this study irrespective of gender, age, height, weight, race, or nationality. The ignorance of demographic factors was due to the fact that these variables were not crucial to this study. As such, the research study was only interested with the opinions held by the 65 participant.
Material
The only material employed in this study was a 5 point Likert-scale questionnaire that allowed the participants to rate to what degree they agreed or disagreed with the ideas expressed in each of the ten questions in the questionnaire. Given that there was no time restriction on how long the participants could take to respond to questions a stopwatch was no necessary for this assessment.
Procedure
The participants were first directed to assemble at lecture hall eight of Gene University at five past noon on the 4th of October, 2020. Once the students were assembled in the lecture hall they were instructed to sit a distance away from each other all across the hall; as research questionnaires were pasted around for them to fill out. The participants were informed there were no wrong or right answers and all they were required to do was to give their honest opinion. To further incentivize the participant to give their honest opinion, they were not required to provide any personal or identifying information maintaining an element of anonymity. Once the students had completed filling out the questionnaires they were instructed to leave the lecture hall in an orderly manner. They placed their questionnaires on a single desk placed strategically near the exit door. All questionnaires were collected and the data from each question was entered in Microsoft Excel 2016 (a unique participant ID was given to each questionnaire was the data was manually for each of the ten questions). Once all the data was collected in Excel, it was transformed to create more variables that reflect the student’s values. The sum of all responses from the ten questions was used as the basis for attitude score for plastic foot prints. More complicated formulaic approaches where used to compute the scores for conservation, tradition, conformity, and security.
Once all the necessary variables were created and properly labelled, they were subjected to descriptive analysis (mean and standard deviation) as well as inferential analysis (correlation assessment). In addition, scatterplots were generated to demonstrate the relationship between the different variables (attitude score for plastic footprint, conservation, tradition, conformity, and security).
Results
Table 1 below contain all the correlational relationships between the five variables in the study. The main thing to note is that attitude has negative correlation values with all the other variables. And the other variables (conservation, tradition, conformity, and security) have positive correlation figures with each other. The descriptive statistics indicated that attitude scores have very little variability from the considerably high mean score of 36.71. On the other hand, the scores for conservation, tradition, conformity, and security tend to vary significant from their respective means as indicated by the large standard deviation values. Table 2 indicates the Pearson correlation test results for all variables with their respective p-values. Figures 1 to 4 demonstrate the scatterplot results for the relationship between attitude and each of the other variables.
Table 1: Correlation Matrix for All Variables
Attitude Score for Plastic Footprint Higher Order Value Basic Value 1 Basic Value 2 Basic Value 3 Mean (average) score Standard Deviation (SD) in score
Attitude Score for Plastic Footprint 1.00 -0.18 -0.07 -0.11 -0.04 36.71 4.57
Conservation -0.18 1.00 0.67 0.69 0.47 -0.68 0.73
Tradition -0.07 0.67 1.00 0.42 0.16 -1.74 1.27
Conformity -0.11 0.69 0.42 1.00 0.06 0.07 1.03
Security -0.04 0.47 0.16 0.06 1.00 -0.23 1.00
Table 2: Pearson Correlation Testing and P-values
Attitudes and: R-value t Statistic t Statistic (pos) DF P Value
Higher Order Value -0.18 -1.44 1.44 63.00 0.15
Basic 1 -0.07 -0.53 0.53 63.00 0.60
Basic 2 -0.11 -0.86 0.86 63.00 0.40
Basic 3 -0.04 -0.31 0.31 63.00 0.76
Higher order and:
Basic 1 0.67 7.21 7.21 63.00 0.00
Basic 2 0.69 7.55 7.55 63.00 0.00
Basic 3 0.47 4.25 4.25 63.00 0.00
Basic 1 and:
Basic 2 0.42 3.63 3.63 63.00 0.00
Basic 3 0.16 1.28 1.28 63.00 0.21
Basic 2 and:
Basic 3 0.06 0.49 0.49 63.00 0.63
Figure 1: Scatterplot for Attitude and Conservation
Figure 2: Scatterplot for Attitudes and Tradition
Figure 3: Scatterplot for Attitude and Conformity
Figure 4: Scatterplot for Attitude and Security
Discussion
From the descriptive analysis results it is clear that majority of the participants have strong attitude. Which means they have a significant opinion on plastic footprint; indicating majority have an issue with usage of plastic materials on a daily basis. The correlation results affirm that a person who accepts the usage of plastic materials is less inclined to participant in conservation matters. From the correlation results, it is clear that attitude has a negative relationship with all other variable. However, none of these negative relationships are significant according to Table 2; as such, all of the hypotheses should be rejected with the exception of the third hypothesis. Conclusively, if people are strongly against plastic usage they are more inclined to participant in the conservation of the environment. In such, cases attitude has positive correlation with conservation. The fact that conservation has a significant positive correlation with tradition, conformity, and security; implies that indeed these three factors are vital towards the overall assessment of a participant’s conservation score. Overall, attitude towards plastic footprint does not have a significant negative relationship with conservation, tradition, conformity, nor security.
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