Ecological Footprint Reduction Behaviors of Individuals in Turkey in the Context of Ecological Sustainability

Mehmet Ünal and Fatma Ünal ()
Additional contact information
Mehmet Ünal: Department of Geography, Karabük University, Karabük 78050, Turkey
Fatma Ünal: Department of Social Studies, Bartın University, Bartın 74100, Turkey

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: While people consume natural resources by interacting with the environment, they also cause some environmental changes. Environmental pollution and construction are among the most important reasons for these changes. In addition, the rate of renewal of natural resources remains slow while consumption is increasing. Thus, biocapacity is slow to renew itself compared to consumption, leading to the emergence of an ecological deficit. The largest share in the ecological deficit belongs to personal consumption. Based on this, the attitudes and behavior of individuals in Turkey to reduce their ecological footprint were examined in the context of ecological sustainability. The survey model was adopted in the study. The data collected from 773 people via the scale and various forms were analyzed. The results of the analysis show that the ecological footprint size in Turkey is above the world average in personal consumption. It has been determined that the participants have significant behavioral deficiencies in the behaviors towards reducing the ecological footprint, such as recycling, reusing the product by repairing, composting, not wasting water, food and clothing, and they tend to use packaged products excessively.

Keywords: biocapacity; ecology; ecological footprint; ecological sustainability; ecological deficit; ecological poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/63/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/63/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2022:i:1:p:63-:d:1009764

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().