The First Step to Communication with Environmentally Responsible Consumer: Measuring Environmental Consciousness of Turkish Consumers 1

In recent years a growing concern for global warming and environmental issues has become apparent. Turkey as a rapidly developing country has several environmental problems. In that situation, the attitudes towards to environment and the consciousness level of the Turkish consumers have gained much more importance. For the purpose of increasing the level of consciousness about environmental issues, communication professionals have to establish a relationship between a positive environmental attitudes and environmentally responsible behaviors through the means of communication. Before designing and implementing any kind of communication process, the characteristics and current consciousness level of target group has to be clearly identified. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the attitudes of the Turkish consumers regarding to their current environmental consciousness and their willingness to adopt environmentally friendly consumption behavior. The environmental consciousness survey used in this study was delivered to the 186 students of 298 attending the first year obligatory courses in Communication Sciences Faculty. In this study, the environmental consciousness was formed by the factors related to awareness and act, concern about environment and willingness, were statistically were analyzed in terms of the opinions of the respondents concerning the environmental consciousness in terms of gender, the region that they came from, their department in the faculty of communication sciences, education level of parents, any kind of training concerning the environmental issues or any environmental associations or social clubs memberships.


Introduction
The unconscious use of natural resources for the requirements of humanity and inconsiderate consumption habits of the people have led to irreversible environmental destructions. Instead of controlling the tools and means of production, the resources are exploited massively by humanity. As a result of that fact, humanity has very important problem is related to unfair access to these sources. Therefore in the world, 20% of humanity is consuming 80% of the natural resources. For half a century, more energy-consuming human activities aiming at satisfying the so-called "well-being" and "comfort" of humanity caused to the energy resources have diminished gradually. Obviously, it is possible to say that our planet and all its inhabitants are today threatened by a potential global ecological crisis (Miran and others, 2008).
In the few decades with the economic emergence in Turkey has brought with it fears of increased environmental degradation. As an experience of high levels of growth in Turkey's economy, the increase in industrial production resulted in higher levels of pollution and greater risks to the country's environment. Besides these, with the rise of domestic energy consumption, Turkish energy consumption has risen dramatically over the past 20 years (http://www.nuce.boun.edu.tr/turkey.html).
Several social and environmental associations and pressure groups, organizations in many parts of the world have emerged, along with government efforts, to promote the cause of the environment to make it a safe place for living for current and future generations with the increasing ecological concerns in recent years. Therefore, many governments have come under pressure to push for legislation to protect the environment. Several laws have, consequently, come out in this respect. At least partly, this has stimulated several organizations to reconsider their business policies to align themselves with the international trend of environmental commitment. (Alsmadi,2007). By the means of well designed policies related to environment, individuals get more aware for environment over time. With the renewability characteristics of the nature, a better natural balance will be formed (Doğan, awareness for environment and the affecting factors, 2) providing a real sensitivity to environment by eligible education systems, 3) accessing the solved environmental problems (Miran and others, 2008) In the light of above mentioned solution model, the aim of this study is to investigate if there is any significant differences among the opinions of the respondents concerning the environmental consciousness in terms of gender, the region that they came from, their department in the faculty of communication sciences, education level of parents, any kind of training concerning the environmental issues or any environmental associations or social clubs memberships. In this study, the environmental consciousness was formed by the factors related to awareness and act, concern about environment and willingness.

Data Collection, Analysis and Results
In this study, combination of several measures was applied. As a result, in the survey, a 5point Likert scale, with 5 = strongly agree and 1 = strongly disagree was used for all items.
The opinions toward environmental consciousness scale contain 47 items; 30 were adapted from the items used in past environmental attitudes scale; and 17 items were included based on reviews of the environmental concern and behavior literature (Haytko & Matulich, 2008).
Additionally 8 demographic items concerning to gender, the region that they came from, their department in the faculty of communication sciences, education level of parents, any kind of training related to environmental issues or membership to any environmental associations were used to get personal information from the target group.
The survey was used in this study was delivered to the Faculty of Communication Sciences.
The faculty of Communication Sciences in Anadolu University in the city of Eskisehir is located in central Anatolia has 4 departments. These departments are Cinema and Television, Communication, Public Relations and Advertising, Journalism. The environmental consciousness survey was applied to the 186 students from totally 298, attending the first year obligatory courses of four departments. In the light of above mentioned data, 64% of total population was represented in this study. The distribution of the respondents in terms of gender, the region that they came from, their department in the faculty of communication sciences, education level of parents, any kind of training related to environmental issues or membership to any environmental associations or social clubs were listed in the table 1.

Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies
Volume: 2 -Issue: 3 -July -2012 have no experience concerning the any kind of training before university. Additionally, most of the students (85%) appear not to member of any kind of environmental associations.
The survey used in this study was translated into Turkish. Turkish version of the environmental consciousness survey was checked by the 2 experts of Turkish and English Languages. The Turkish version of the survey was retranslated into English and compared to original version.
The procedure about environmental consciousness scale was performed gradually. After assessing the overall reliabilities, principal components factor analysis was performed to ascertain the dimensionality of the scale. Then reliabilities were assessed for their subdimensions. The variables of concerning the gender, the region that they came from, their department in the faculty of communication sciences, education level of parents, any kind of training related to environmental issues or membership to any environmental associations finally assessed due to relationship between factors related to environmentally consciousness.

Reliability and Factor Analysis
In the scale of the study, items about environmentally responsible consumer behaviors, Haytko & Matulich, (2008) used almost all the themes studied in their previous research. In Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 2 -Issue: 3 -July -2012 their previous research environmental themes were widely borrowed from Ecological Attitudes and Knowledge Scale (EAKS). However, they did not include the item in their previous research was like that: "I am willing to give up driving on a weekend due to an ozone/smog alert." Also they added 17 more items like that: Some of the new items were about recycling (Laroche, Bergeron, Barbaro-Forleo, 2001;Brown and Wahlers, 1998), renewable energy (Rowlands, Scott and Parker, 2002), eco-labeling (Brown and Wahlers, 1998;Mohr, Eroglu, Ellen, 1998), climate change (Rowlands, Scott and Parker, 2002) and ecofriendly cars (Buss, 2001).
The most significant measure of reliability is coefficient alpha. In exploratory analyses an acceptable level of coefficient alpha is .70. is suggested (Nunnally,1978 In the light of above mentioned results and deleted items, the factors presented in the study of Haytko & Matulich (2008) were changed. The items (q.6,25,28,29) lowering the reliability were located in the factor of "Environmental Responsibility and Impact", This factor after deleting the items, it was eliminated because it has only 2 items left.
In the survey of environmental consciousness, exploratory factor analysis was used. Table 2 shows the items and their loadings on each of the three factors. The first factor seems to describe awareness and act responses and the second factor is related to consumers' concerns about environment. Finally the third factor appears to describe consumers' willingness to specific behaviors regarding to environment. In the table 2, the means of "I become upset when I think about the harm being done to the environment" (m=4.42), "It makes me angry to think that the government doesn't do more to help control environmental problems" (m=4.11) in the factor of concern about environment; Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 2 -Issue: 3 -July -2012 "I strive to conserve water in my home" (m=4.24) in the factor of awareness and act and looks higher than the other items. In the factor of willingness highest mean is 3.89 and it belongs to item "I'd be willing to ride a bicycle or use public transportation to go to work/school to reduce air pollution".
In addition to assessing the mean scores, standard deviations, t-values and F-values were calculated to examine potential differences in attitudes relating to environmental consciousness under the factors of awareness and act, concern about environment and willingness in terms of gender, the region that they came from, their department in the faculty of communication sciences, education level of parents, any kind of training related to environmental issues or membership to any environmental associations. The analysis in the Table 3 indicates that there was no significant difference in environmental consciousness due to gender, as the t-value was -1.64. The Table 13 shows that the level of significance was α = .687, which was clearly not statistically significant at the level of α ≤ 0.05, that is, male and female consumers were likely to show similar attitudes regarding their environmental consciousness. There is no significant difference in consumers' environmental consciousness due to gender (α ≤ 0.05).
In Table 4, to assess if there was significant difference in consumers' environmental consciousness due to any kind of environmental training received before university (α ≤ 0.05), Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 2 -Issue: 3 -July -2012 mean scores, standard deviations and t-values were calculated. The results reveals that there was statistically significant difference between the people received any kind of training before university and others as the t-value was 2.370. The analysis in the Table 5 shows that there was statistically significant difference in consumers' environmental consciousness due to membership to any kind of environmental associations, as the t-value was 2.622. In terms of the results were shown in Table 5, people have any kind of membership and the others were not likely to show similar attitudes regarding the environmental consciousness. The mean scores, standard deviations, and F-values were used to assess differences in students' attitudes related to environmental consciousness as the F-value was .584. From that perspective, the figures in Table 6 reveal that there is no significant difference in respondents' environmental consciousness in terms of the region of Anatolia that they came from (α ≤ 0.05).
So as to examine if there was any statistically significant difference in terms of the educational level of the parents, mean scores, standard deviations, and F-values were used to assess differences in students' attitudes related to environmental consciousness as shown in Table 7. The research findings presented in the table 7 represents that there were no significant differences in students' attitudes concerning the environmental consciousness due to level of education of the parents. As indicated in the table, for the educational situation for the fathers, the level of significance was α =.877, for the educational level of mothers was α =.688 which was not statistically significant at the level of α ≤ 0.05.

Conclusion
The study concludes that, there were not significant differences in the attitudes of respondents in terms of their gender, the region that they came from, their department in the faculty of communication sciences, education level of parents. The respondents have familiar attitudes towards to environmental consciousness from the perspective of the factors related to awareness and act, concern about environment and willingness. However, the attitudes of the respondents due to any kind of training received concerning the environmental issues before entering university and any environmental associations or social club memberships were statistically significant. The attitudes of students received any kind of training concerning the environment or any kinds of membership to environmental associations were differed from the others. For that reason, several compulsory or selective courses will take place in the instruction of the high schools even in the first eight years of the education in Turkey, to increase awareness regarding to environmental issues. In the light of data gathered from this study, new obligatory or selective courses about environmental issues will be added to instruction of Communication Faculty, because the graduates of this faculty, besides being a consumer, they will be the communication professionals responsible from organization of the communication activities regarding to environmental issues. They will design social campaigns and make advertisements, cinema and TV films. Additionally, the number of the environmental associations should be increased and the students should be stimulated to participate to activities of these associations. Also based on the data taken from this study will be used to design further studies concerning the social campaigns about environmental consciousness and green consumerism.
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 2 -Issue: 3 -July -2012