Revealing Students’ Environmental Habits on Electricity and Water Usage in Their Daily Life

This study aims to (1) reveal the environmental habits of students in daily usage of electricity and water and (2) examine how demographic factors influence students’ environmental habits. This research is conducted through a survey of 1.347 students from universities in Indonesia. This study uses a Likert scale questionnaire consisting of 2 statement items, namely “I turn off the electricity when not in use”, and “I always turn off the water faucet when not in use” as the research instrument. Five demographic variables, namely gender, students’ major, grade level, grade point average, and parental occupation, are tested to determine their effect on students’ environmental habits. Inferential statistics, namely ANOVA and multiple linear regression test are used to test the variables, while descriptive statistics are used to find the frequency, mean, standard deviation, and standard error. The result shows that two variables, namely gender and students’ major have a significant influence on the environmental habits of students with a contribution of 2.7% (P<.05, R square =.027), while the other three variables had an insignificant impact on students’ environmental habits (P>.05). Furthermore, the result of this study proves that (1) women have better environmental habits than men (P<.05), and (2) students in the science education major have better environmental habits than other majors such as social humanities and non-science education (P<.05). This study indicates the importance of introducing and understanding the environment to foster awareness and positive behavior of students towards the environment.