From Thoughts to Actions: The Importance of Climate Change Education in Enhancing Students' Self-Efficacy
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Bertone, Edoardo
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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.
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Australian Journal of Environmental Education
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35
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2
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© 2019 Australian Association of Environmental Education (AAEE). This is the author-manuscript version of this paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal website for access to the definitive, published version.
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Environmental sciences
Education
Human society
Social Sciences
Education & Educational Research
Bayesian networks
climate change education
national education policy
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Muroi, SK; Bertone, E, From Thoughts to Actions: The Importance of Climate Change Education in Enhancing Students' Self-Efficacy, Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 2019, 35 (2), pp. 123-144