Transforming Environmental Knowledge Into Behavior: The Mediating Role of Environmental Emotions

Abstract

The present study was based on the premise that environmental knowledge can drive environmental behavior only if it arouses environmental emotions. Using a structural equations modeling approach, we tested the direct, as well as the indirect (mediated) effects of knowledge on behavior and assessed the mediating role of environmental emotions. We found that knowledge is an important but distal variable, whose significant effect is fully mediated by emotions. The high explanatory power and good fit indices of the model supported and validated the important role of emotions in the learning process.

Keywords:

• environmental knowledge, environmental education, environmental emotions, environmental behavior, structural equations model

FUNDING

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space, under Grant 3-8083.