Page 63 - 5th APA Conference Program Book Final

present findings might help in formulating programs to encourage older persons to engage in social and physical
leisure activities to help prevent deterioration of their health.

PS 5.2 Population and Environment

11:00am - 12:30pm Wednesday, 4th August, 2021
Presentation Type LIVE Session
Moderator: Vicente B. Jurlano , Fajar D. Heryudha

56 How to measure people’s environmental behaviour? A case study of South
Sumatra, Indonesia

1
2
2
Marpaleni Marpaleni , Gouranga Dasvarma , Udoy Saikia
2
1 Statistics, South Sumatera, Palembang, Indonesia. Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
Categories

9. Population and Environment, Climate Change and Sustainable Development

Abstract

This paper introduces an index of people’s daily activities that affect the environment. A representative sample of
490 household heads in South Sumatra were interviewed to collect data about 30 variables signifying people’s
environmental behaviour in six dimensions:

• food,
• housing,
• energy,
• water,
• transport,
• waste.

Factor Analysis was conducted to select the most significant variables and dimensions, resulting in 15 variables and
five dimensions. The dimensions on housing and energy were combined together. An Environmental Behaviour
Index (EBI) was constructed as a composite index from the 15 variables. Following the two-thirds principle of Alkire
and Foster (2011)Weblink1 household heads were deemed environmentally friendly if they had an EBI score of
66.7 on a scale of 0 to 100. The overall EBI in South Sumatra was below 50, indicating a generally unfriendly
environmental behaviour of the people. Eighty percent of the household heads scored an EBI below 66.7. The
dimension on transport contributed the most to the EBI but people also had the lowest EBI score on this dimension.
Hence the people of South Sumatra need to improve their transport habits more than their behaviour on any other
dimension mentioned above.

63 | P a g e