Sense of Community and Environmental Commitment. The Power of Environmental Organisations

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Psychology - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, University of Hagen (Institut für Psychologie), language: English, abstract: The challenges of tackling the menacing impacts of the advancing destruction of the natural environment receives increasing attention from researchers, indicating that it is important to discover factors that motivate people to foster pro-environmental behaviour in their daily life.

This study examined community characteristics to provide insight why people commit themselves to community organisations focusing on environmental protection. Employees and volunteers of natural conservation organisations in Germany completed a survey containing instruments measuring organisational Sense of Community (COSOC), Pychological Empowerment (PE) and Community Participation (CP). Results indicated that COSOC predicted participatory behaviour of the organisation members, mediated by PE and that these community strengths are interrelated.

The examination of potential effects of demographics found age, education, type of employment and working hours per week influencing COSOC. Regression analysis indicated gender, size of the place of residence and working hours per week effecting CP. Methodological limitations and further implications are discussed.