Investigating the Level of Environmental Responsibility and Participation of Rural Areas in Conservation, a case study in Bandar Abbas County

The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of environmental responsibility and environmental participation among the residents of rural areas in Bandar Abbas county, which was conducted by survey and field methods. Sample size was determined based on the Cochran’s formula and the required data were collected through questionnaires. A total of 366 questionnaires were completed in a stratified-random manner. The research questionnaire was designed in two parts: environmental participation and environmental responsibility, using the 5-points Likert scale. The reliability of the questionnaires, calculated by test-retest and Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the participation and environmental responsibility questionnaires, were 0.79 and 0.86 respectively. Results showed that economic, social and cultural participations with the score of 14.37, 13.70 and 12.96 respectively, have the highest scores in rural communities. Among the dimensions of responsibility, human rights responsibility with an average of 19.43 was the highest score among the residents of rural areas, followed by legal responsibility (18.6), intellectual and internal (17.37) and operational (16.85) responsibility. Comparison of participation and responsibility in rural areas of Bandar Abbas showed that there is no significant difference between different rural areas (P ˃ 0.05). The rural residents are active and involved in environmental protection, showing people's attention to the natural environment of the region.