Greening due to environmental education? Environmental knowledge, attitudes, consumer behavior and everyday pro-environmental activities of Hungarian high school and university students
Introduction
Today's students will have a major influence on the future state of the environment which makes the incorporation and institutionalization of sustainability issues into education highly relevant (see Lozano, 2006; Wright, 2007; Waas et al., 2010; Zilahy and Huisingh, 2009). The challenge for universities is high: the integration of different perspectives and the concept of sustainability makes systemic and holistic thinking and radically innovative ways of education necessary (Svanström et al., 2008; Lozano, 2006). The importance of understanding the attitudes and behavior of students towards the environment and of finding effective ways to influence this behavior through education is thus beyond dispute. In Hungary, little research has so far dealt specifically with the environmental consciousness and consumption habits of students. To address this knowledge gap, two surveys were conducted to capture information about:
- (1)
what today's Hungarian students, of differing ages, influenced by the different characteristics of environmental education, think and know about environmental issues (see Asunta, 2004; Kagawa, 2007; Michalos et al., 2009);
- (2)
how students view the relationship between the state of the environment and consumer lifestyles (see Benn, 2004; Worsley and Skrzypiec, 1998);
- (3)
how students actually behave and what determines their willingness to act in a pro-environmental way (see Boyes et al., 2008 and Kagawa, 2007).
The two surveys were executed in Autumn 2009 and Spring 2010 and were designed to elicit and allow comparison of the opinions of university and high school students (here the term ‘university students’ covers both university and college students of 18–24 years of age, while ‘high school students’ refers to 14–18 year old students from various types of high schools1).
The main assumption behind the research was that the intensity of involvement in environmental education is a significant factor in the formation of students' opinions and behavior regarding environmental issues (see Álvarez Suárez and Vega Marcote, 2010; Wright, 2007, Svanström et al., 2008; Lukman et al., 2013; Lozano, 2006 as well as Zilahy and Huisingh, 2009). Hence, the interrelationships between environmental education and environmental knowledge, attitudes and behavior were examined in the paper.
Section snippets
Determinants of students' environmental awareness
Generally, the most important dimensions of an individual’s environmental awareness appear to be environmental knowledge, values, attitudes, willingness to act and actual behaviors (Ajzen, 1985; Nemcsicsné Zsóka, 2008; Luthans, 2006) which are influenced by several factors including intentional and situational elements. Based on a profound value system, knowledge and attitudes are crucial because of their potential impact on behavior (although Csutora (2012) states that even positive,
Research objective and assumptions
The objective of the research was to uncover how strong is the relationship between environmental education and the knowledge, attitudes and actual behaviors of high school and university students in Hungary. The ultimate goal of the research was to formulate recommendations for environmental education in Hungary in order to effectively foster more sustainable student behaviors at both high school and university level. The research is exploratory in nature, although based on some preliminary
Impact of environmental education on students
Hearing about environmental issues at school or in everyday life is likely to have an important effect on students' thinking and attitudes. In Hungarian high schools, there is no option to specialize in environmental issues but subjects like geography, biology, chemistry and physics include environmental topics. Hence, high school students are liable to be more exposed to environmental topics than university students. Only 11% of high school students reported to not taking one single
Mapping the relationship between variables using MDS analysis
The analysis of the relationships between 14 variables from our questionnaire highlights the nature of Hungarian students' environmental knowledge, values and actual behavior in an explicit way. To visualize the data easily and to standardize different scales of measurement all variables were transformed into binary variables (thus gaining 58 binary variables as an input for our analysis). Table 1 presents the details, with an explanation of the content of variables in addition to the
Discussion
Our research was designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the relationship between environmental education and elements of the pro-environmental behavior (knowledge, attitudes and reported actual behavior) of students. The comparative analysis of students at different levels of education and specialization is unique in the literature, as surveys usually focus on either level. In spite of its complicated nature, we deliberately chose to undertake a comparative analysis to highlight the
Conclusions
The causalities between environmental education and pro-environmental behaviors are difficult to measure in a reliable way. The range of aspects which influences the behavior of high school and university students is very wide and the interrelationship of those aspects is rather complex. It is difficult therefore to separate the effects of environmental education from the many other factors (e.g. the role of age in personal responsibility, the impacts of various information sources, habits and
Acknowledgments
The research was financially supported by the EEA and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism in the framework of a project called “Sustainable Consumption, Production and Communication”. Furthermore, we would like to thank our colleague, Dr. András Bezegh for designing the online questionnaire for the university sample. Publishing is supported by the TÁMOP 4.2.2/B-10/1-2010-0023 project.
References (49)
How does environmental concern influence specific environmentally related behaviors? A new answer to an old question
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2003)- et al.
Twenty years after Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera: a new meta-analysis of psycho-social determinants of pro-environmental behavior
Journal of Environmental Psychology
(2007) - et al.
Learning settings for climate change
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2010) - et al.
Games by which to learn and teach about sustainable development: exploring the relevance of games and experiential learning for sustainability
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2006) - et al.
Going beyond the rhetoric: system-wide changes in universities for sustainable societies
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2010) Ecological modernisation: new perspectives
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2008)Incorporation and institutionalisation of SD into universities: breaking through barriers to change
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2006)Diffusion of sustainable development in universities’ curricula: an empirical example from Cardiff University
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2010)- et al.
Addressing the attitudinal gap towards improving the environment: a case study from a primary school in Slovenia
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2013) Consistency and “awareness gaps” in the environmental behaviour of Hungarian companies
Journal of Cleaner Production
(2008)