| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In recent years, environmental and waste management systems have become a key concern of the government, the general public, and industries. People seem to be sensitive to environmental issues. However, their images of associations with environmental problems and ecological behaviors vary widely among consumers. The factors that promote or hinder ecological behavior also differ from consumer to consumer and from behavior to behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify key factors affecting each ecological behavior and propose a theoretical framework of ecological communication. Based on previous research, we proposed the integrated ecological behavior model, and analyzed the mechanism of consumer's ecological behavior. This model was tested using Japanese household recycling and reducing waste data. The results suggested that this model fits the data well and confirms the hypothesized causal relationships. Consumer's ecological behavior is determined by ecological involvement, perceived cost and benefit, accessibility of a recycling program, and subjective norm. Especially, ecological involvement that is possible to enjoy an environmentally friendly lifestyle through the creation of a strong relationship between individual values and pro-environmental attitude, has the most important accelerative factor of ecological behavior. The research also showed media publicity greatly influences the ecological involvement. Our integrated model should help researchers to better understand the complex structure of consumer waste reduction behavior. It will be expected that the model has significant potential to explain the structure of the other ecological behavior such as choice of environmentally friendly products, energy conservation, et al. Based on these findings, we proposed a theoretical framework of ecological communication for Japanese companies
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