Environmental attitudes of adolescents are influenced by many social factors including family background, school characteristics, school programs, and social interactions with peersThis study examined the influence of the family, the characteristics of the school, and the social interactions or school peer group on adolescents’ attitudes toward the environment. Researchers used data provided by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 survey. The data used for this study represented 72,066 fifteen-year-old students from 6432 schools in the European Union.
The PISA provides information about the socio-economic and family characteristics of students aged 15. The 2006 survey also provides information about students’ environmental attitudes and about the environmental issues provided by the students’ schools. The PISA format allowed the researchers to link the performance and characteristics of the schools to characteristics of the students.
Results indicated that the environmental attitudes of students are influenced by their school-grade peers, individual and family characteristics, as well as school activities. Girls tended to be more pro-environment-oriented than boys and gender moderated the effect of other variables. For example, students from homes with higher socio-economic status tended to hold more pro-environment attitudes than other students, especially for girls. Peer group attitudes predicted the attitudes of individuals, especially girls. Additionally, students living in rural and natural environments tended to have higher levels of concern for the environment, especially for girls. However, for boys more so than girls, country pro-environmental policies predicted a higher level of concern for the environment. Environmental information provided at school also influenced students’ environmental attitudes. This was especially true for information about air pollution, forest depletion, and water shortages.
These findings suggest that the environmental attitudes of adolescents are influenced by many social factors including family background, school characteristics, school programs, and social interactions with peers. Based on these findings, the authors call attention to the importance of considering the social context of the adolescent in the planning and implementation of environmental education strategies. They specifically recommend that educational authorities should maintain, expand, and improve informative environmental campaigns. They also recommend that such school campaigns should be integrated with more general community efforts and that they should involve teachers and families. The authors also call for special attention to boys, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, and students living in urban areas as important targets for environmental education campaigns.
Finally, the researchers call for authorities to consider the impact of ‘social multipliers’ when evaluating the costs and benefits of a particular environmental policy. In addition to the initial impact of an intervention on adolescent attitudes, there would be an additional impact due to the influence of peers. Peers may serve to amplify the desired effects of environmental strategies.
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