How Are Students’ Pro-environmental Behaviors Formed? A Qualitative Content Analysis

Universities play an undeniable role in directing and explaining behavior patterns. This raises expectations from universities to institutionalize pro-environmental behaviors in their structure. It is so of crucial importance to identify factors affecting students’ proenvironmental behaviors as the most important human resources at universities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify factors affecting students’ proenvironmental behaviors. The statistical population of this qualitative study was composed of agricultural students at Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran. According to the the research aim, the PRISMA flowchart were used to refine and select the appropriate data. Data were analyzed by using NVivo10 software. Results show that students’ proenvironmental behavior is affected by 10 factors, the most important ones being values and norms, experiences, social capital, knowledge and awareness, university infrastructure, organizational culture, curriculum contents, self-efficacy, and concerns over environmental degradation. Cluster analysis shows that organizational culture and individual values influence all other factors that underpin students’ proenvironmental behaviors.