Comportamento agroeocológico e preocupação ambiental em estudantes de agronomia brasileiros e franceses

Abstract

Agriculture is essential to human existence, however, the traditional form, based on agribusiness, has generated several environmental damages, above all, to the human being. In view of this theme, the study seeks to understand which factors can encourage the practice of pro-environmental behavior in agriculture, especially agroecological behavior, aiming on contributing to the discussion of tools for Environmental Education and public policies for sustainable development. In order to fulfill the proposed objective, a literature review was first carried out on the pro-environmental behavior in agriculture in order to know the main variables that encouraged the adoption of such behavior. The American Psychological Association (PsycINFO), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) and Web of Science (WoS) databases were used, using the key words: pro-environmental behavior and proenvironmental behavior. A cross-cultural, exploratory and comparative research was also carried out to analyze the relationship between environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior of Agronomy students, Brazilian and French, in order to identify which factors are associated with agroecological behavior . The importance of conducting a cross-cultural study is understanding how a behavior occurs in one culture, so it can be encouraged in another. A total of 174 Brazilian students and 150 French students participated in the study. Environmental Precautions Measures, Pro-environmental behavior measures and quantitative and qualitative issues concerning Agroecology were used. The results found in the literature review showed that the main variables that stimulated the promotion of pro-environmental behavior in agriculture were intrinsic in nature, such as biospheric values, environmental awareness, future orientation, self-efficacy, and especially scientific knowledge, being the most mentioned variable as driven of the studied behavior. Regarding the analysis of the relationship between environmental concern, pro-environmental behaviors of Agronomy, Brazilian and French students with the objective of identifying which factors are associated with agroecological behavior, in France, environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior were related with agroecological behavior, while in Brazil, agroecological behavior correlated only with pro-environmental behavior. Among the analyzed variables, especially those related to agroecological behavior, were more present among French students, pointing to the need to discuss about public policies in Brazil and Environmental Education strategies, since the results of the two surveys showed that these are effective tools that encourage the adoption of pro-environmental behaviors, such as agroecology.