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From Thoughts to Actions: The Importance of Climate Change Education in Enhancing Students’ Self-Efficacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2019

Subaru Ken Muroi  and
Edoardo Bertone Open the ORCID record for Edoardo Bertone [Opens in a new window]
Subaru Ken Muroi
Affiliation:
Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Edoardo Bertone*
Affiliation:
School of Engineering and Built Environment & Cities Research Institute, Griffith University, Southport, Queensland, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: e.bertone@griffith.edu.au
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Abstract

The relation between the understanding and belief of the site-specific dangers of climate change and the behaviour that individuals take to mitigate their impacts was assessed to investigate the psychological antecedent to pro-environmental behaviour; a necessity to mitigate anthropogenic climate change at the individual level. A quantitative cross-sectional design was employed to measure beliefs and behaviour of university students. Correlation was measured between the belief in one’s ability to affect change and pro-environmental behaviour. The hypothesis that nations facing greater climate threat would behave accordingly was tested on the two largest national representatives of the sample, China and Australia. In addition, a naïve Bayesian network, coupled with a self-organising map, was developed to explore correlations between self-efficacy and participants’ socio-demographic features. Results showed that Chinese students are more likely to have higher self-efficacy, while such trend was not noticed for Australians. Similarly, participants with higher educational qualifications, older, and with higher paid jobs also have a higher chance of presenting pro-environmental behaviour. Despite the study limitations, there seems to be evidence suggesting that educational and climate change policies have affected students’ self-efficacy and individual commitment to mitigation.

Keywords

Bayesian networksclimate change educationnational education policyself-efficacy
Type
Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , July 2019 , pp. 123 - 144
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019 

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