The Role of Cultural Capital in the Developing of Ecological Citizenship

Abstract

Industrial and technological development of Societies and changing land use patterns and mismanagement in harnessing more of the nature, caused to vulnerability of lifecycle, plant and animal organisms and natural landscapes and so formation of sustainable society is in trouble. In this regard, environmental sociology relying on the ecological interpretation is to investigate the environmental problems with using sociological knowledge. Therefore, the new concept of ecological Citizenship is formed that focused on the functionality and responsibility and cultural capital is an important factor in improving citizens' responsibility. In this study, the relationship of ecological citizenship and cultural capital is investigated using the survey method. The survey instrument was a questionnaire that utilizes foreign research using exploratory factor analysis of its components have been identified and localization. The Population study is, citizens over 15 years in Tabriz are 670 of them using multi-stage cluster sample and sampling method were selected. The findings show that, ecological citizenship with the 78.57% is relatively good. However, the cultural capital with 52.97% has been somewhat low. Pearson correlation test shows that there is a significant and positive correlation between cultural capital and its dimensions (except Institutionalized dimension) with ecological citizenship. Regression test results show that the three dimensions of cultural capital, could explain 7.4% of the variance of ecological citizenship.

Keywords

• ecological citizenship
• cultural capital
• environmental sociology
• tabriz