Appraisal of Attitudes Toward  Sustainable Development

Sadough Vanini, Hassan; Veisi, Hadi; Ashraf Alipour, Ali

Appraisal of Attitudes Toward Sustainable Development

Document Type : Original Articles

Authors

¹ Department of Geography, Faculty of the Earth Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Evin, Tehran-Iran, G.C

² Department of Agroecology, Environmental Sciences Research Institute,Shahid Beheshti University, Evin, Tehran-Iran, G.C.

³ Department of Environment, Expert of Bureau of Participation and Public Education

Abstract

After Rio summit, Department of Environment (DOE) was identified as responsible for policy making and integrating of environmental concerns into the country’s social and economic development plans in Iran. It is clear that the performance of Department of Environment is dependent on the perceptions and knowledge of its staff and experts, since perception and attitude is learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object and creates action or behavior that is generally consistent. Regarding, this study, staff perceptions were assisted toward items in relate with the chapter headings of the UNCED document Agenda 21. The number of participants was 120, randomly drawn from the selected population. Factor analysis was utilized to reveal the latent attitudes behind the staff’s perceptions. The findings were indicated that there are 8 factors to measure the construct of sustainable development about 82.3 percent the variance. Results were indicated that the most important domain of sustainable development in environmental experts’viewpoints is natural resources protection and environmental management. Then, it was concluded that perceptions are more towards the environmental dimension than economic and social dimensions of sustainable development.

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