Atitudes ambientais no contexto do trabalho: construção e validação de instrumento

Abstract

The person-environment relationship, which happens dynamically and constantly, is an aspect of great importance for the individual, social, economic and environmental field. Thus, it is of great importance to reflect on alternatives for a new relationship between the person and the environment, especially in the context of socio-environmental changes, which demonstrate the urgency of the theme, both for discussions and for pro-environmental actions. The present study aims to create and validate an instrument to assess Environmental Attitudes in the context of work. In order to contextually elucidate aspects of the socio-environmental transformations that have occurred nowadays, perceptions about the human-environment relationship were presented in the context of the geographic environmental debate, in addition to some considerations on climate change, biodiversity in the biological and social aspect and the understanding of the social dimension of sustainability. Furthermore, relevant constructs of Environmental Psychology are discussed, namely, Environmental Attitudes, Ecological Behavior, Environmental Beliefs, Habits and Connection with Nature, in order to propose a structure of Environmental Attitudes that includes cognitive, affective and behavioral components. The theoretical model of the present study is that the constructs Environmental Beliefs, Connection with Nature and Habits are predictors of Environmental Attitudes. For the development of the instrument for measuring Environmental Attitudes, an initial version of the instrument was proposed in the work context based on a literature review covering conceptual aspects and analyzes of other instruments for measuring attitudes and related constructs. To determine the suitability of the theoretically prepared items and the attribution factors covered by the test, an analysis was carried out by a body of judges (experts in the area of the object of study) and a semantic analysis of the items by the target audience. After these stages, a pilot instrument was proposed, contemplating the considerations explained by the judges and the target audience and applied with 362 (three hundred and sixty-two) public servants of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). A descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was also carried out based on the answers obtained from the research participants. The validated instrument comprises 17 items, in a 6-6-5 ratio, that is, 6 items on environmental beliefs, 6 items on connection with nature, 5 items on habits. The consistency of the items proposed by the measure of McDonald's omega for EAAT was ω=0.89 and the measure of Cronbach's Alpha for EAAT was α=0.85, showing good internal consistency. In a global analysis of the application of the instrument at the Federal University of Ceará, the servers tend to manifest attitudes that are mostly favorable to the environment, which is in accordance with the perception of a tendency towards an ecocentric view of nature. However, based on the scores in the habit dimension, it was also verified the importance of a greater engagement of the servers in improvement actions, increasing the knowledge of the servers about good practices regarding the environment in the context of work. It is suggested that the aforementioned scale is a strategic tool for decision-making in companies regarding internal practices of nature preservation and the promotion of employees' quality of life, through the insertion of elements of nature in the daily work.