Environmental Education and Commitments Can Improve Teenagers' Conservation Behavior

Environment education (EE) programs in the European Union focus on the goal of promoting conservation behavior. However, previous research shows that increasing environmental knowledge or awareness is not enough to change behavior. One demonstrated tactic for promoting environmental behavior is for individuals to display a public pledge or commitment to a certain behavior change. But most previous studies on the use of commitments for environmental behavior change focus on adults. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how EE and the commitment technique impact the conservation behaviors of teenagers. The results will provide guidance for future programs to target environmental behavior change among adolescents.

The study took place over four months in Lisbon, Portugal, with a group of 418 students in grades 6-9. The experimental group consisted of 248 students who took part in EE projects at their schools throughout the study. The control group consisted of 170 students who did not participate in EE projects. Within each of the groups, about one third of the students signed a public commitment to conserve water and energy in their homes for a month; one third of the students signed a private commitment to do the same; and one third of the students did not sign a commitment.

The students used household meters to measure their household water and energy consumption. They recorded their consumption for one month at the beginning of the study to use as a reference; then, after two-thirds of the students signed a commitment, all students were instructed to try to reduce their water and energy consumption over the next month. All students also completed a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the study to measure their attitudes, intention, and behavior towards conserving water and energy, as well as their ecological identity (i.e., the extent to which individuals see themselves as environmentalists,) and their personal norm (i.e., whether they feel guilty about high water/energy consumption). The authors used statistical analyses to measure differences in actual water and energy based on the measurements from household meters, and changes in the students' self-reported measures from the questionnaires.

The results from the household meter measurements showed no significant difference in water consumption among the experimental and control groups overall. However, within the experimental group (the students who participated in EE) there was a significant decrease in water consumption from the students who signed a commitment versus those who did not; additionally, those who signed a public commitment saved more water than those who signed a private commitment. Interestingly, the experimental group did save significantly more energy overall than the control group. But in the case of energy consumption, the results did not show that any type of commitment had a significant effect.

The questionnaire results show that EE had a significant positive effect on students' ecological identity regarding both water and energy consumption. EE also showed a significant positive correlation with water consumption behavior and with energy consumption personal norms. Personal norms with regards to water use were significantly lowest among students in the control group who did not sign a commitment. But overall signing a commitment did not have a significant effect on any of the self-reported measures for water nor energy consumption.

The authors pointed out a few factors that limit the strength of their conclusions. For one, the questionnaire only included a single question correlating to each self-reported measure, for the sake of keeping the survey brief and simple. Future studies could use a more elaborate questionnaire to provide more accurate results or to evaluate other psychological factors. Additionally, the household meter readings for water and energy use are limited because only 125 students submitted complete household meter readings. These results are also not a direct indicator of the students' behavior, since there were other people living in their households. The authors recommend that future research should replicate these methods with more diverse populations to determine whether the results are similar for teenagers across different cultures and socioeconomic levels.

The authors concluded that, on the whole, the combination of EE with signing a commitment has strong potential to create a positive change in teenagers' conservation behavior. This study corroborates the results of previous research on environmental behavior, but is the first to specifically focus on teenagers. The authors also recommend that future studies could measure more long-term changes on teenagers' behavior, attitudes, and ecological identity, as well as the self-reported behavior of other family members living in their households to investigate the potential for intergenerational learning.