Ayfer Aydiner Boylu

Do Families Attitudes and Behaviors Support Sustainable Water Consumption

For increasing the quality of life and sustainable improvement, the importance of reaching for drinkable, usable and clean water sources in the 21st century has increased and started to become a significant potential problem to be solved in the World. With todays busy lifestyles, people are often unaware of the amount of water they consume. With the acceleration of modern life, individuals often choose the solution that best suits their time and convenience, rather than optimizing for efficiency and environmental outcomes, since they do not find water-related activities important. Water, which is naturally regarded as an inexhaustible source, is gradually decreasing over time and disappearing day by day. Therefore this research has been planned to determine individuals’ water consumption behavior at homes regarding the effective and efficient use of water sources. The sample comprised 654 individuals who resided in Safranbolu, Turkey. Data were collected through a demographic information form, Attitudes Toward Water Use (AtWC), Water Saving Behavior at the Home (WSBQ) and Sustainable Consumption Behavior Scale (SCBs). To determine the factors affecting water saving behavior at the home, correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were employed. Pearson correlation analyses revealed significant positive relationship between sustainable consumption behavior (SCBs) and saving behavior at the home (WSBQ) (r=.43; p<0.01), attitudes toward water use (AtWC) and saving behavior at the home (WSBQ) (r=.24; p<0.01). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis displayed that water saving behavior at home is influences by sustainable consumption behavior and attitudes toward water conservation. The theoretical implication of this study helps to understand the basic concepts of water saving behavior. Keywords: Households, attitudes toward water use, water saving behavior, sustainable consumption behavior

Single Parent Families

Single-parent families face many problems in their daily lives. These problems include parenting, child care, chores, drop in the level of income, social life, and also the use of time. As a result of these problems, leisure consumption, which is one of the indicators of quality of life, can be changed. The purpose of this study is to explore the changes in leisure consumption in single-parent families. Participants of this study consisted of single-parent employees at the Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey (n=119). The families in which the parent is female (76.5%) made up a larger portion of the study than the families in which the parent is male (23.5%). The ages of the participants ranged from 25-65 years (M=40.91 years, SD=9.75). More than half had college degree (50.4%) and 27.7% had an education level that consisted of secondary school or less. The overall monthly income level was between 2001 TL-3000 TL (41.2%) and single-child families (64.7%) were prominent. According the results, single-parent families experienced a decrease in consumption in activities such as going to the cinema, theatre, and concerst (62.2%), participating in ticketed sporting events (52.9%), and eating out (47.9%) because of economic reasons.