study of the effects of environmental values on household's waste behavior (case study of Tehran)

Urban growth and development caused many environmental problems in current age. One of these problems is environmental impacts of wastes which can be solved by inhabitant’s participation in municipal recycling and waste programs. There are many psycho-social factors affecting people’s participation in municipal waste and recycling programs. One of these factors is environmental values. So, current article investigated environmental values and its effects on waste behavior. The hypothesis of the research was: there is a relationship between environmental values and waste behavior. For this purpose, theoretical definitions of environmental values and waste behavior were used. Survey was the research method and a questionnaire was used for collecting the data. Clustering sampling was used. 400 questionnaires were filled by householder’s living in the region. Data was analyzed by SPSS software. Result showed that inhabitants showed high environmental values (on average 4.58 of 5). In addition, they also showed good waste behavior (on average 3.108 of 4). Finally, there was a weak positive relationship found between environmental values and waste behavior, in a way that only 1.5% of waste behavior is predicted by environmental values. At the end of the article the reasons of weak relationship between these two variables were explained.