Interest in studies about the relationship between human beings and the environment has continuously increased. Nevertheless, studies concerning the investigation of the complexity of behavior phenomenon linked to environment are recent. The lack of instruments to measure ecological behavior in the Brazilian context, in order to understand this phenomenon in the social and cultural framework of the country, highlights the importance and need to establish reliable and suitable instruments for the study of this subject in Brazil. This paper describes the development and validation of the Ecological Behavior Scale (EBS) for use within the Brazilian context. The study involved 234 high school and university students (142 female and 88 male and 4 missing; average age equals 20.5). The results point to the multidimensionality of ecological behavior. The four factors found were activism-consume, water and energy saving, urban cleanliness, and recycling.
ecological behavior; scale; validation
