The Role of Entrepreneurial Characteristics in the Development of Environmental Awareness among Students of the Environmental Management Department

Abstract

The present research aims to study the entrepreneurial characteristics that will enhance the students environmental awareness in the Environmental Management Department (henceforth: EMD) at the College of Management and Economics, University of Babylon. The sample is selected randomly from the students of EMD and the number of the sample is (45) students. One of the principle aims of the research is to diagnose the role played by the university students with their entrepreneurial characteristics to preserve the environment and protect it from pollution. The problem of the study aroused from the interest of college in giving a great importance to the entrepreneurial characteristics and its application to raise the available capabilities to achieve entrepreneurship and thus achieving its objectives and giving more efforts to apply such characteristics to develop the environmental awareness among the college students. The questionnaire is used as a tool for collecting statistical data which is analyzed by using SPSS. The research is based on a set of hypotheses to study the effect of the dimensions of the independent variable (entrepreneurial characteristics) on the dependent variable (environmental awareness). The research is also based on descriptive statistics (arithmetic mean, standard deviation). As such, the present research has reached the following conclusions: 1. There is correlation between the two variables: entrepreneurial characteristics and environmental awareness in the college (the study area). 2. The increasing interest of the faculty members in enriching their students with entrepreneurial characteristics contributed to their environmental awareness. 3. The researchers (of the present study) suggest a set of recommendations, including the need to follow-up and encourage the entrepreneurial students and adopt their ideas and proposals and give them a large area of freedom in expressing their views and ideas to produce their entrepreneurial energies to promote the environment in our society.