engleski

Broadening the scope: career choice as a form of pro-environmental behaviour

Research within environmental psychology has predominantly focused on the consumption side of economic relations, calling for the instrumental and direct approaches to consumer behaviour change (Uzzell, 2010). However, usefulness of these approaches in behaviour change was questioned considering embeddedness of behaviour in a wider socio-economic context, which is one of the reasons why a more focus on the production side came to the fore. The entry of young people into the labour market is a major step in the creation of the workforce and therefore has a great potential for interventions with large indirect effects for the achievement of sustainable development goals. In this paper we explored the willingness of adolescents to engage in occupations that can contribute to sustainability and examined determinants of such decision. We used social cognitive career theory (SCCT ; Lent, Brown & Hackett, 1994) to predict adolescents’ vocational interest and career goals in the domain of sustainability. Following a traditional three-dimensional approach to sustainable development, three models were devised in order to predict willingness for pursuing careers which could lead to enhancement of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Respondents were 582 secondary school graduates (413 females and 169 males) enrolled in different secondary schools in the city of Zagreb who were invited to participate in on-line research. Measures of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, vocational interests, goals, contextual supports and barriers, and learning experiences were tailored to cover three domains of sustainable development – environmental, social and economic. Testing of proposed models was carried out in a two-step process. After testing for the adequacy of measurement models (CFA), structural models hypothesizing relationships among latent constructs were tested using SEM. Model fit indicators for environmental, social and economic sustainability SCCT model showed an acceptable fit based on absolute and incremental indices. All the direct and indirect paths in environmental sustainability SCCT model were significant and in the expected direction, and the model predicted a substantial percentage of variance of vocational interests and goals in the domain of environmental sustainability. On the other hand, same direct and indirect paths in social and economic sustainability SCCT model were (in)significant, suggesting that these models are not as good in predicting vocational interests and goals in social and economic domains of sustainability. Career choices can have a large indirect effect in promotion of sustainable development goals. In this paper we have presented SCCT model of career choice and confirmed its applicability for predicting vocational interests and goals in domains of environmental, social and economic sustainability.

career ; pro-environmental behaviour ; Social Cognitive Career Theory

http://www.icep2017.org/?fwp=29&fwl=2