Assessing Cognitive and Social Attitudes toward Environmental Conservation in Coral Reef Social-Ecological Systems

Social Sciences

Kostas Alexandridis¹ 

[1] Institute for Geocomputational Analysis and Statistics (GeoCAS), University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, VI 00802, USA;

关键词: environmental attitudes;    coral reefs;    scale development;    item-response theory;    graded response model;    social-ecological systems;    reliability;    generalized structural equation model;   

DOI  :  10.3390/socsci7070109

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This study addresses the latent construct of attitudes toward environmental conservation based on study participant’s responses. We measured and evaluated the latent scale based on an 18-item scale instrument, over four experimental strata (N = 945) in the US Virgin Islands and the Caribbean. We estimated the latent scale reliability and validity. We further fitted multiple alternative two-parameter logistic (2PL) and graded response models (GRM) from Item-Response Theory. We finally constructed and fitted equivalent structural and generalized structural equation models (SEM/GSEM) for the attitudinal latent scale. All scale measures (composite, alpha-based, IRT-based, and SEM-based) were consistently and reliably valid measures of the study participants’ latent attitudes toward conservation. We found statistically significant differences among participant’s attributes relating to socio-demographic, physical, and core environmental characteristics of participants. We assert that the nature of relationship between cognitive attitudes and individual as well as social behavior related to environmental conservation.

【 授权许可】

Unknown