ABSTRACT
The ecological, or pro-environmental behavior, both in activities and aspects of life of individuals and society in relation to the environment, are directly related to environmental conscientization that currently has support in undergraduate courses of environmental education, that aims to mold the professional most conscious of their actions in relation to natural environment. The current quantitative and descriptive study sought to understand the factors that influence the Ecological Behaviour of college students in public and private universities from the State of Piaui. It was used the Ecological Behavior Scale for collect data, validated by Pato and Tamayo (2006), applied to students of the Bachelor in Business Administration, with a sample of 486 respondents. Descriptive and multivariate analyzes were used to evaluate data. From the parallel analysis and exploratory factor analysis it was found six factors, which were then used as independent variables in the regression analysis, where the dependent variable was the Ecological Behavior. The results of this study differ from Pato and Tamayo (2006), especially subdividing "saving water and energy" by one factor to each resource, and also separating "activism-consumption" in "activism" and "activism-consumption". Regression analysis showed very high explanatory level model, with R²=99.2%, validating the explanatory factors of ecological behavior. The theoretical contributions of this study lie in the distinction of results even using similar respondents, in this case, students, which may be due to cultural or regional factors.
Keywords:
Ecological Behavior; Environmental Behavior, Environmental Education; Undergraduate Ecological Behavior
