Environmental Empowerment and Its Influence on Sustainable Waste Management Practices among Adolescent Tribal Girls

Environmental crisis especially the waste management problem is an issue that requires immediate response and innovation especially in the marginalized societies. This experimental study explores the effect of environmental empowerment on sustainable waste-management behaviours in a group of adolescent tribal girls a population that is often overlooked in an environmental education program.  

The research centers on five major independent variables which include, environmental awareness, environmental knowledge, decision-making power, the involvement in environmental activities, and the access to environmental resources and information. In addition, it assesses the mediation impact of community support to the association between environmental empowerment and sustainable waste-management practices.  

Using the quantitative, descriptive-analytical research design, it was possible to acquire primary data, through a structured questionnaire given to 200 adolescent tribal girls, aged 13-18 years. The participants were chosen through stratified random sampling in three tribal groups. The answers were measured on the five-point Likert scale, and the instrument had a high level of reliability, where the Cronbach alpha is greater than 0.78 in all dimensions. Data were measured through SPSS with the input of the descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis and mediation analysis according to the Baron and Kenny method.  

The outcomes have shown that all the five independent variables have a statistically significant impact on sustainable waste-management practices at 5 per cent level of significance. The strongest predictor (b = 0.531) is environmental awareness, then there are environmental knowledge (b = 0.496), environmental activities (b = 0.452), environmental resources and information (b = 0.418), and power to make decisions (b = 0.387). The partial mediating role of community support is also high, taking into consideration 34.6 per cent of the overall impact of environmental empowerment on waste-management practices. Cohen f 2 indicates that all of the effect sizes are large, which highlights high practical significance values. On this basis all null hypotheses were rejected and the alternative hypotheses were accepted.  

Finally, a set of environmental empowerment, obtained through the help of effective awareness programmes, better knowledge, participatory activities, better access to resources, and more chances to make a decision is the key to making the adolescent tribal girls follow sustainable waste-management practices supported by a strong community support. These results will be of immense benefit to policy makers, schools and community leaders who aim at promoting environmental sustainability by applying specific empowerment policies in tribal realities.