THE RECYCLING BEHAVIOUR OF THE UNIVERSITY STUDENT. A MEASUREMENT INSTRUMENT PROPOSAL

In the Fundamentals of Marketing subject in the 3rd year Economics degree, one of the practical exercises is associated with social marketing. In the 2014/2015 course the students proposed the topic of recycling waste and how companies and institutions collaborate in recycling. In the current world situation, growing demand for natural resources is causing many countries to use them in a rational and sustainable way. The waste which is generated is another of the problems which must be dealt with in order for it to be resolved. The well-known 3R rule is a proposal regarding consumption habits, consisting of Reduce, Re-use and Recycle. It is within this framework that the possibility of considering the University of Alicante as an exceptional place in which to put the recycling culture into practice, and to develop environmental education strategies promoting an awareness and responsibility in environmental matters arises. The research, which forms part of a more ambitious project, aims to design an instrument allowing us to measure the ecological behaviour of our target population: the university. It has derived from different instruments used previously in the associated literature and which have been adapted to the current context. A flexible instrument has been obtained and the results show that it has good reliability and validity.