Cultural Capital and Environmental Behaviors of Families in Tehran

Environmental crises-including production of huge amounts of waste in metropolises-have become a serious problem today. The present study applied the Bourdieu Cultural Capital Theory to study the role of the cultural capital of families in Tehran in their environmental behavior. The research method was, survey and sample size consisted of 384 families in regions no. 11 and 20 of Tehran Municipality, selected by multistage cluster sampling method. The findings showed that there is a direct correlation between the cultural capital of families and their environmental behaviors, whereas in relation to the sub-scales of cultural capital, the relationship between the objectified and the embodied cultural capital has a direct effect on the environmental behaviors, and institutionalized cultural capital lacks direct effect. In sum, the objectified cultural capital embodied cultural capital, institutionalized cultural capital, age and residence time in the neighborhood had been most effective on the environmental behaviors of families. Findings, especially lack of direct effect of education on the improvement of environmental behavior, indicate that environment training has not been effective in Iran and the education system has failed to institutionalize such training in individuals and families.