Pro-environmental Behaviors, Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Development in Russia

The studies of environmental awareness or the so-called people's pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) became a popular topic in Europe, North America and Asia, but not yet in Russia. Many studies investigated PEBs revealed that monetary saving and health concern are considered to be the most common influential factors for many PEBs. Because of the lowest electric power and heat tariffs in the world as well as abundant natural resources it can be assumed that the level of environmental awareness in Russia is low comparing to EU. Nowadays this problem can became a barrier for innovative development and diffusion of new energy efficient technologies. In this paper we present the results of empirical research aiming evaluation of environmental awareness in one of the southern region of Russia - Krasnodar region. In research we also evaluate the informational transparency in the field of ecology in Russia and distinguish the most popular sources of information. The method of research is medium-scale face-to-face inquiry. The survey involved 112 respondents from one big city (Krasnodar), it's suburbs, several small cities and rural areas. Data analysis was performed using StatSoft STATISTICA 10.0. The non-parametric Mann-Whitney tests and Kruskal - Wallis one-way analysis of variance were used to reveal the optimal quantification that describes the relationships between the categorical scores of each variable as well as the relationships between the variables themselves. In order to identify relationships between variables, measured in nominal scales, contingency tables (cross tabulation) were used. In some cases (where it was appropriate) correlation analysis and one-way ANOVA were used.