Climate change is a worldwide concern, but education can play an important role in combatting this threat. When more educated people care for the planet and take steps to safeguard it, climate change becomes less of a threat and more likely action are taken to preserve its resources.
Research has also demonstrated the indirect effect education can have on environmental behavior by changing risk perception and increasing environmental knowledge - making it an invaluable policy tool.
1. Awareness
Awareness refers to being conscious of something, like knowing that the sun rises every morning. It serves as the basis for taking actions.
Education on the relationship between nature and society can raise students' awareness of environmental problems such as global warming, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. Such awareness may lead to sustainable practices like using less energy, conserving water usage and decreasing waste generation.
Examining the impact of education on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors is possible by considering its interaction with personal, demographic, student science abilities, parental values and characteristics, etc. In our model, education had a direct influence on both general environmental awareness (Retaware) and specific awareness of RETs (RETs-aware), this finding being robust with additional measures of pro-environmental attitudes and behavior added in columns (3) and (4) of Table 6. Furthermore, 2SLS regression models with environmental knowledge mediation variables added as extra controls in order to observe whether these additional effects went beyond what were seen with just using control variables alone.
2. Education
Education goes far beyond academic success; it equips people with the tools needed to understand and interpret their surroundings, develop moral convictions and engage in responsible and compassionate behavior.
We conducted a mediation analysis to establish whether environmental knowledge mediates the positive effect of education on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Our results show that when environmental knowledge measures were included as variables in columns (2) and (4), their coefficients attenuated significantly, suggesting improved knowledge is perhaps one of the primary mechanisms through which education influences pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors.
As expected, we performed 2SLS regressions using an alternative measure of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in columns (3) and (4) to verify their robustness. As expected, results show that higher education is associated with more pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors; these trends appear mainly among low-income individuals, suggesting that in China at least, cutting education costs might be an effective means for combatting climate change mitigation.
3. Action
Although educating individuals is an integral first step, education alone will not make any lasting change. Action must also be taken for real change to take place.
Unfortunately, textbooks and government policies only promote low-impact actions, likely because these actions are easier for media to promote. This follows the "foot-in-the-door technique", in which encouraging small behaviors may eventually lead to larger ones (Thogersen & Crompton 2009).
Realistically, low-impact actions alone may not only not be sufficient in protecting the environment; they could actually discourage further engagement with it. Dickinson et al (2009) discovered that using reusable bags was only 1/10th as effective at saving CO2 as becoming vegetarian for one year. Furthermore, well-educated people may overstate their pro-environmental attitude and behavior for image reasons, leading to an artificially higher estimate of their impact on these traits.
4. Commitment
Commitment is the result of dedication and perseverance. People who demonstrate this characteristic make decisions with persistence even when things are tough, which helps separate those with firm resolve from those less dedicated; those with dedication often have greater ability to overcome difficulties than their less committed counterparts. Examples of commitment include being reliable, working outside your comfort zone and surmounting obstacles along the way to reaching your goals.
Education can be an effective tool in cultivating an active commitment towards sustainable practices. It can help individuals form deeper ties to nature and increase awareness of environmental issues while inspiring them to take action. Furthermore, extensive research shows that comprehensive conservation education programs have significant influence on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors when controlled for educational attainment; this suggests more needs to be done to drive sustainability across higher education.
