Environmental Attitudes and

This dissertation examines the relationship between environmental attitudes and environmental managers' behavioral intentions. Two studies were completed. The preliminary study validated five environmental attitude scales for use with business managers. These five scales measure attitudes concerning conservation, ecology, property rights, environmental regulation, and faith in technology. The primary study used Ajzen's theory of planned behavior to predict the influence of attitudes, and other variables, on environmental managers' intention to increase pollution prevention activity. Twelve hypotheses were formed to fulfill four objectives for the primary study. The hypotheses were tested using structural equations modeling and correlation tests. The first objective was to test whether attitudes influence managers' intentions to engage in pollution prevention. The second objective was to evaluate the theory of planned behavior for organizational applications. The third objective was to test variables relevant to pollution prevention. These variables were drawn from the environmental management literature and information available in the Toxics Release Inventory. The fourth objective was to test some variables intended to expand the theory of planned behavior. Both studies used surveys to collect data. For the primary study, two hundred and ninety-five usable surveys were collected from environmental managers at American manufacturing facilities. The results demonstrated that environmental managers' attitudes influence their behavioral intentions to engage in pollution prevention. The final theory of planned behavior model, which included a measure of past behavior, fit the data well. The remaining variables were not significant or could not be tested in the structural equations analysis because of measurement difficulties. However, in correlation tests, the general attitudes variable and a variable measuring beliefs in the effectiveness of pollution prevention were positively associated with behavioral intention to engage in pollution prevention. Surprisingly, onsite recycling activity was negatively associated with behavioral intention to engage in pollution prevention activity. The implications and limitations of these findings are outlined along with a discussion of some potential applications for practitioners. Potential research applications using the theory of planned behavior for other environmental management activities along with other areas of corporate social performance are discussed.