In recent decades, degradation of natural resources (soil, water etc.) due to human actions causes environmental movements like environmental ethics. Environmental ethic theories emphasize a value-base of environmental behaviors. It seems that value-based factors such as moral norms and value orientations can affect human’ attitudes and behaviors. Farmers have direct relationship with environment resources such as soil, water etc. therefore, their attitudes and behvaiors in relation to these resources are very important. This study intended to investigate value factors including moral norms and value orientations among farmers in Shiraz County, Iran; and predicting their environmental attitude and behaviors by these value factors. The research population of this study was the farmers of Shiraz County, Iran. By conducting a survey research, 272 farmers were asked to complete the questionnaire to gather the factual and attitudinal data. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a panel of experts in the field of agricultural extension. Conducting a preliminary study helped us improve the reliability of the questionnaire, resulted in the range of Cronbach’s alpha of indices from 0.67 to 0.91. The results of path analysis showed that moral norms, altruistic value orientation, biospheric value orientation, education, farming experience, and egoistic value orientation have 0.29, 0.20, 0.16, 0.16, 0.12 and 0.02 standardized total effects on environmental attitude, respectively. Also, yield, moral norms, environmental attitude, altruistic value orientation, land ownership, biospheric value orientation, egoistic value orientation, education and farming experience have 0.24, 0.21, 0.20, 0.20, 0.13, 0.07, -0.04, 0.03 and 0.02 standardized total effects on environmental behaviors, respectively. Finally, based on the results some recommendations were presented.

Keywords: ethics, moral norms, value orientations, environmental behavior, agriculture