Environmental Consumer Behavior of Junior High School Students - Case Study of Anyang City -

중학생의 환경친화적 소비 행동 - 안양시 지역을 중심으로 -

The objectives of this study are to identify the environmental consumer behavior, to examine the degree of environmental consumer behavior of the junior high school students, and to investigate the educational system of a school which influence the consumer behavior. The data used in this study are 368 male and female students in 9th grade in Anyang City, Kyunggi-do province. Statistics used for data analysis are means, standard deviation, t-test, and Multiple Regression Analysis. The results of the research are summarized as follows : First of all, as a tendency of the environmental consumer behavior of junior high students, the primary factor to the environmental problems was media, and among those, TV and radio was the medium to environmental problems. This implies the fact that the time juveniles interact with mass media is significantly growing, which means that transmitting environmental problems by programs targeted to adolescences through mass media would be effective. Next, the disposal process showed the highest environmental consumer behavior, followed by the consuming and purchasing process. Education on the purchasing process will be necessary to encourage environmental consumer behavior. The route of obtaining environmental knowledge was basically from school and the level of the average environmental knowledge fumed out to be low. This shows the need to produce and distribute media education materials because educating the conclusion of actual experiments will be more effective than that of theoretical studies. The conformity showed general indifference on environmental consumer behavior and the environmental resources were normally collected seperated. Conformity is a cultural bond teenagers think important, therefore education available for students about the same age should be developed. Next, the value intention of the surveyed showed that the ecological intention was highest, followed by economic and convenience intentions. This means the morale of the junior high students to environmental consumer behavior is set sound. Females tended to act more environmentally, while males showed more intention to economic causes. Also, the students of the boys-only or girls-only schools showed higher environmentally sound behavior in disposal processes. Finally, the environmental consumer behavior was influenced most by environmental consumer behavior of the conformity group, followed by ecological morale, frequency of encountering environmental problems, gender, environmental knowledge, whether the school was boys-only or girls-only or not, economical morale, respectively. The largest factor affecting the consumer activity of the purchase, consumption, and disposal process was environmental consumer behavior of the conformity group, along with the ecological morale, and the frequency of encountering environmental problems. This implies that conformity group is a large factor to the juveniles and a plan to entice the environmental consumer behavior of conformity groups are necessary.