Exploring solid waste management behaviors among undergraduate biology education students

Dinda Senia Putri, Dharma Ferry

Abstract


Environmental education is expected to foster responsible waste-management behavior among university students; however, empirical evidence on the stability of solid-waste management beliefs and attitudes across academic levels remains limited. In particular, few studies have examined whether progression in semester level is associated with differences in belief- and attitude-based behavioral tendencies among biology education students. This study aimed to analyze students’ solid waste management behavior based on two components of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), namely beliefs and attitudes, and to examine whether these indicators differ across semesters. This research employed a descriptive quantitative design with a cross-sectional survey approach involving undergraduate Biology Education students who had completed the Environmental Knowledge course. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA after meeting the assumptions of normality. The findings indicate that both belief and attitude indicators are generally categorized as very good across semesters. However, the ANOVA results reveal no statistically significant differences in belief scores across semesters (p = 0.262) or in attitude scores (p = 0.269), with small effect sizes indicating minimal practical differences. These results suggest that students’ cognitive (belief-based) and evaluative (attitude-based) orientations toward solid waste management remain relatively stable regardless of academic progression.

Keywords


Biology education, Environmental beliefs, Pro-environmental behavior, Solid waste management, Theory of planned behavior

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.17509/aijbe.v9i1.96429

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