A study of cultural and social factors affecting environmental degradation (case of study: the youth of the city of Tehran)

The trend of environmental degradation and natural resources’ loss, all around the world, is considered a major fact of our current time. Nowadays, environmental issues have social concepts. Environmental degradation is related to lots of factor the most important of which are social and cultural factors. Present research has been accomplished with the purpose of studying the influence of social cultural factors on Tehran environmental degradation. Present research is applied form objective point of view and the method used is from survey type. The statistical population of present research includes young individuals in the range of 18-35 year-old living in districts (17-13-10-6-2) of Tehran Metropolitan area. The least sample size for answering questionnaires of present research is 453 young individuals selected by quota sampling method and questionnaires were distributed among them. Data analysis was made by sample power software. Results indicate a significant relation among all research independent variables with environmental degradation variable (sig≤0.05). Considering Pearson coefficient values, it may be stated that the relation of social class, environmental knowledge and cultural capital with environmental degradation variable is estimated to be poor and inverse, while the relationship of consumerism and level of being religious variables with environmental degradation is average, poor and direct respectively.