The Influence of Personal Religious Practices on Destructive Behavior to Natural Resources and Environment

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the factors driving on destructive behavior of individuals to natural resources and environment. Using a case study in eastern Indonesia, we investigated behavior of individual fisherman in coastal communities and their impacts on coral reefs. We characterize economic, non-economic and cultural/behavioral factors influencing destructive behaviors such as coral mining, blast fishing, and poisoning fishing. Economic and noneconomic/social factors are household size, age, origin, education, income, social activities, mobility, and primary job. However, we characterize individual cultural/behavioral factors with religious ritual practice, more specifically by the number of pray performed by respondents calculated by set of movement (raka’at). Using logistic regression, we shows that the piety of people in performing ritual worship (pray) has influenced significantly the behavior of respondents. The more devout people in performing ritual worship, the less destructible people are to the environment. Meanwhile, several social and economic variables have affected the destructive behavior of people including household size, age, origin, mobility, and main job. Three variables including income, education and social activity have no significant influence to the destructive behavior of people to natural resources and environment.

Keywords: religious ritual, coral reef, blast fishing, poisoning fishing, destructive behavior