The central part of this monography explores the extent to which social influence methods, which are used to encourage individuals’ environmental awareness and overcome obstacles preventing the ...spread of environmentally friendly behavior, are successful in supporting individuals’ environmental protection tendencies, changing readiness to engage in environmentally friendly behavior, and changing their behavior itself. There is a long journey from awareness of environmental issues to actual environmentally friendly behavior, in which four basic research aspects are highlighted: the selection of behaviors that should be changed, the study of factors causing environmentally unfriendly behaviors, the use of carefully selected social influence methods in order to change environmental awareness and behavior, and a systematic assessment of their influence.It has been established that readiness to engage in environmentally friendly behavior is more strongly encouraged by internal or psychological factors of environmental behavior, whereas in addition to these the behavior itself is also influenced by external or social factors. Social influence methods, based on practical approach, which is adapted to different target groups, have proven to be a successful method, which can be also implemented in educational sistem. Young people are most receptive to changes and are an effective medium to transfer such ideas and proper behavior to seniors.
The modern way of life requires the exploitation of natural resources, which leads to a significant deterioration of the environment and can even endanger human health.The basic hypothesis is that ...the population of Slovenia in general is still too inadequately informed and insufficiently environmentally educated and aware about water as a natural resource to have the motivation and capability to actively participate in the protection of water as a natural resource.Most people support environmental protection in principle, especially declaratively, since this is a socially approved action. However, when faced with restrictions that would interfere with their way of life by limiting their activities or increasing their expenses, their enthusiasm decreases rapidly. And the closer we get to actions we could define as “environmentally active,” the fewer people are actually prepared to protect the environment. Possibly a fifth of the population can be defined as people who favour environmental protection and consider it a value for which they themselves are willing to do something.The survey showed that level of education is very significant relative to people’s response to environmental problems and that the more educated are more environmentally friendly.
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