The Mediating Effect of Environmental Consciousness between Attitudes towards Urban Green Space and Sustainable Development

Sustainable development remains one of the defining challenges of the twenty-first century, requiring the balanced integration of economic, social, and environmental objectives at every level of governance. This study investigated the mediating effect of environmental consciousness between residents’ attitudes towards urban green space and sustainable development in Barangay Poblacion, Loreto, Agusan del Sur, Philippines. Although global awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals is uneven and urban green-space provision in the country falls well below international benchmarks, little empirical work has examined the psychological mechanism that links how residents value green space to broader sustainability outcomes in a rural Philippine local-government setting. Anchored on a descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional design, the study drew 303 household heads through simple random sampling from a population of 1,419, as determined by the Raosoft calculator at a 5% margin of error and 95% confidence level. Data were gathered using an adapted, expert-reviewed survey instrument measured on a five-point Likert scale, and analyzed using the mean, the Pearson product-moment correlation, multiple regression, and path analysis in AMOS. Results revealed high levels of environmental consciousness (M = 4.16), attitudes towards urban green space (M = 4.13), and sustainable development (M = 4.11). Significant positive relationships were found among all three variables, and path analysis confirmed that environmental consciousness partially mediated the relationship between attitudes towards urban green space and sustainable development, accounting for approximately 16.2% of the total effect. The findings suggest that cultivating environmental consciousness is a strategic lever for converting favourable green-space attitudes into sustainable outcomes, and they carry practical implications for local policy on green-space provision and environmental education. The study contributes to the limited body of urban environmental-psychology research in the Philippine context and offers an evidence-based foundation for future work in sustainable urban environmental management.

environmental consciousness, urban green space, sustainable development, mediation, path analysis, household heads, Philippines

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