Latinos are one of the fastest growing ethnic minority group s in the United
States, and their influence on natural resource allocation and management, especially in
Texas to date, has been largely ignored. For this reason, the purpose of my study was to
determine Texas Latinos' attitudes toward natural resources and the environment, while
considering many cultural factors often lacking in previous studies. Texas Latino
community college and university students (n = 635) were surveyed. The survey was
derived from three commonly used indices, as well as an acculturation rating scale. Of
the 12 independent variables tested (ethnicity, gender, age, religious preference,
religiosity, combined parent's income, parent educational level, environmental
identification, political affiliation, political candidate's position on environmental issues,
number of grandparents born in the United States, and acculturation level), only 6
(gender, religiosity, political candidate's position on environmental issues, combined
parent income, mother's education level, and generation) were important in predicting
environmental concern (P < 0.05). However, within group comparisons, four variables
appear to be important predictors of environmental concern: gender, political
candidate's position on environmental issues, mother's education, and combined parent income. The results indicate that: women are more environmentally aware (1.5 x
odds) than men; survey respondents who identified a political candidate's position on
environmental issues as important had greater environmental concern (1.5-2.5 x odds)
than those who did not; as parent combined income increased, environmental concern
values also increased (2.0-3.0 x odds); and environmental concern values decreased
with an increase in mother's education level (4.5-8.0 x odds). My findings suggest that
demographic predictors of environmental attitudes for my sample are similar to those of
other study findings. Results from my study benefit natural resource and environmental
organizations in program development and implementation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/3238 |
| Date | 12 April 2006 |
| Creators | Lopez, Angelica |
| Contributors | Boyd, Barry L., Torres, Cruz C. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 233012 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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