  This paper evaluates the significant factors contributing to environmental
awareness among individuals living in the urban area of Sylhet, Bangladesh.
Ordered Probit(OPM) estimation is applied on the value of ten measures of
individual environmental concern. The estimated results of OPM reveal the
dominance of higher education, higher income, and full-employment status on
environmental concern and environmentally responsible behavior. Younger and
more educated respondents tended to be more knowledgeable and concerned than
older and less educated respondents. The marginal effect of household size,
middle-income level income, and part-time employment status of the survey
respondents played a less significant role in the degree of environmental
awareness. Findings also validate the "age hypothesis" proposed by Van Liere
and Dunlap (1980), and the gender effect reveals an insignificant role in
determining the degree of environmental concern. Environmental awareness among
urban individuals with higher income increased linearly with environmental
awareness programs which may have significant policy importance, such as
environmental awareness programs for old-aged and less-educated individuals,
and may lead to increased taxation on higher income groups to mitigate city
areas' pollution problems.
