Global climate level knowledge and attitudes of disaster response staff: The case of Erzincan province

The attitudes of the disaster response personnel in global events that cause disaster potential are like a leading indicator in terms of general attitude as well as being a role model for the society. For this reason, in the present study, the attitudes of the disaster response personnel towards global climate change were investigated through the disaster response personnel working in Erzincan. The universe of the research is AFAD, Fire Department and 112 personnel working in the province of Erzincan. A questionnaire was applied to 320 people who were reached by easy sampling method and agreed to participate. Data were analyzed with SPSS software. There are two scales and six independent variables in the questionnaire, whose validity and reliability criteria are met. One of the scales is the "Uncertainty" scale, which was prepared by Whirmarsh (2005) and has two sub-dimensions (Apathy and Skepticism). The other one is the one-dimensional "Pro-Environmental" scale prepared by Mertig (2003). The scales were translated into Turkish by Emrah HİĞDE (2014) and applied to university students. In the current study, validity and reliability analyzes were performed on the scales applied in the disaster response personnel universe. In addition, confirmatory factor analyzes testing the compatibility of the factor distributions of the scales with the original scale were also performed and factor structures were confirmed. Since the data met the parametric analysis conditions, they were analyzed with T and ANOVA tests. Frequency and percentage analyzes were also applied. Looking at the results of the research, it was determined that as the age of the participants increased, their attitudes towards climate change became more negative. Another remarkable result is that firefighters' attitudes towards global climate change are significantly negative compared to other occupational groups. It is expected that disasters triggered by climate change will increase. It is hoped that the current study examining the climate change attitudes of disaster response personnel will contribute both to the general climate change attitude of the society and to the strategies to be developed by policy makers. Keywords: Disaster, Climate, Global Climate Change