Evaluating Environmental Awareness and Knowledge of Rural Communities (Case Study: Choghakhor Rural Area)

In recent decades, the catastrophic increase in environmental degradation in its various dimensions has been considered by the international community. In the context of these environmental disorders, many inappropriate behaviors that are the result of ignorance and lack of environmental knowledge should not be ignored and rural areas can have a double impact in this regard due to their closer relationship with the environment.

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the level of environmental knowledge and awareness of the villagers in the rural area of Choghakhor.

This research is applied and descriptive-analytical (based on survey) in terms of type and method, respectively. The statistical population includes villagers in the Choghakhor area of Boroujen County. Accordingly, 251 samples from 2065 households were selected by random sampling and questioned.

The results of the study show that the average score of environmental knowledge in the sample group is 140.27 which is higher than the cut-off score; therefore, the level of villagers’ environmental awareness and knowledge is above average. The results of the chi-square test and ETA correlation coefficient show that there is a positive and moderate relationship between gender and marital status with the level of awareness and environmental knowledge. For the variables of age and education, according to the value of Kendall's tau-b correlation coefficient -0.179 and 0.401, this relationship is negative-weak and positive-average, respectively. But, there is no relationship between the level of environmental awareness and knowledge and the villagers’ employment status or occupation. Conversely, this relationship exists weakly for the income variable. The results of one-way analysis of variance with the F value (1.248) are not significant and this shows that the spatial difference is not significant with respect to environmental awareness and knowledge.Innovation: The innovation of research lies in the application of indicators appropriate to local conditions, type of tests, and research location.