Abstract

Objective: This research was conducted with the aim of studying the role of environmental knowledge in environmental responsibility and environmentally friendly behavior of paragliding athletes.
Methodology: In order to carry out this research, a survey method was used. All paraglider athletes using the flight site of Ramyan city were considered as the community. In a period of 3 months, 319 paragliding athletes were purposefully selected as samples. Data collection was done using three questionnaires of environmental knowledge (Liang et al., 2016), environmental responsibility (Taufique et al., 2014) and environmentally friendly behavior (Lee et al., 2015). After the completion of data collection, statistical analyzes were performed in two forms, descriptive and inferential.
Results: The findings of the research showed that environmental knowledge has a positive and significant effect on the environmental responsibility of paragliding athletes. Another part of the results showed that the effect of environmental knowledge on the environment-friendly behavior of paragliding athletes is positive and significant. In addition, the results showed that environmental responsibility has a positive and significant effect on the environment-friendly behavior of paragliding athletes. In the end, it was found that environmental knowledge has a positive and significant effect on the environment-friendly behavior of paragliding athletes with a mediating role of environmental responsibility.
Conclusion: Training environmental issues to paraglider athletes can have positive consequences such as increasing environmental responsibility and developing nature-friendly behavior in them.