Factors affecting agricultural students' energy saving behavior at University of Tehran

Consumption of energy has increased steadily over the past decades. One solution, towards reducing the consumption is to motivate people to decrease energy waste. This study was carried out with the aim of investigating the factors affecting agricultural students’ energy saving behavior. A survey approach was used in this research. The population of the study contained of M.Sc. and Ph.D. students in agriculture faculty of Tehran University (N=250), from which 126 students were selected by using simple random samplling. A questionnaire was developed to gather data. Validity of the research instrument were confirmed based on the evaluation of a panel of experts, convergent and discriminant validity, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient and component reliability were used to assess its relaibility. The results indicated that the attitude of students towards saving energy was strong, and their social norm, saving energy intention and saving energy behavior were intermediate. The results of the correlation analysis showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between the social norm and the attitude towards saving energy with the students' energy saving intention, and the relationship between the attitude and the intention was higher than the relationship between the social norm and the intention. The findings also showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between the components of the theory of reasoned action and students’ energy saving behavior. The relationship between intention and social norm with energy saving behavior was intermediate, and the relationship between attitude and energy saving behavior was high. Based on the results of structural equation modeling, only attitude towards energy saving was effective in energy saving behavior and the research model was able to explain 24% of students' energy saving behavior changes.