Climate change educational policies can improve students' self-efficacy and increase pro-environmental behaviors

Human-caused climate problems have increased over time and are of significant concern despite spreading awareness of climate change though environmental education. To create effective climate change education, educators need to understand the connection between a person's belief and how that affects their behavior. This has been a difficult topic to study, considering that a person's knowledge of climate change does not necessarily lead to pro-environmental behaviors. The authors of this paper wanted to see if the connection between understanding of climate change and pro-environmental behaviors could be affected by where a person was raised. The researchers also wanted to understand self-efficacy--the belief that your own actions can make an impact--and its effect on climate change. The researchers sought to see if there was a discrepancy in self-efficacy and pro-environmental behaviors in Chinese and Australian students and if there were any demographic factors that affected pro-environmental behavior.

This study was conducted at Bond University in Australia. The researchers gave three-part questionnaires to 305 students ages 17-59 years old. The first part had demographic questions. To determine if they were considered Chinese or Australian for the study, students were asked which country they had spent the most time in during their life. The second part asked questions about student behaviors that would impact the environment, like if they turn lights off when they leave the room or take public transportation. Behaviors were measured on a six-point Likert scale with 1 being “n/a”, 2 “never” and 6 “always”. The third part had questions about attitudes toward climate change. Attitudes were measured on a six-point Likert scale with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 6 being “strongly agree”, higher scores meant stronger pro-environmental attitudes. Part of the questions from this section were also used to measure self-efficacy. The results were then analyzed for relationships between attitudes and behavior surrounding climate change.

The results show that the Chinese students in this study exhibited more pro-environmental behaviors than the Australian students. However, the students had no difference in their attitudes toward climate change. Students who spent more time in China were more had more pro-environmental behaviors and made an effort to reduce their energy consumption, packaging consumption, and fuel consumption. This was thought to be a result of faster changes in China's climate change education because of the difference in government structure. Policies that support climate change education may have led for Chinese students to learn more pro-environmental behaviors because of early exposure.

Self-efficacy proved to be a good predictor of behavior for Chinese students, but not the Australian students. The students who spent most of their life in China had higher self-efficacy, whereas the Australian students had no direct correlations between self-efficacy and behavior in Australian students. Self-efficacy also predicted attitude scores for the entire sample, meaning those with high self-efficacy had more positive environmental attitudes. Age also played a role in self-efficacy scores. The older students had higher self-efficacy scores than the younger students. Education also affected self-efficacy, with participants with higher education having higher self-efficacy.

This study had a few limitations. One limitation of this study is that the research was based on a self-reported survey. This is a limitation because people can be biased when evaluating themselves, especially when it comes to pro-environmental behaviors. Another limitation is that the study only took place at one university, that was a private university, and therefore the study results may not be applicable to other universities or generalized further.

Based on the positive results of Chinese students' self-efficacy and pro-environmental behaviors, and the positive effects of age and education on self-efficacy, the authors believe policies that provide climate change education are needed. Improving self-efficacy is important in this education. Encouraging students to believe that they can impact climate change could help them have more pro-environmental behaviors.