The influence of situational emotions on the intention for sustainable consumer behaviour in a student-centred intervention

Abstract

Within the curriculum guidelines for Bavaria, we designed a hands-on educational programme for teaching sustainability with regard to agriculture, food and consumerism, partly implemented on a farm as an out-of-school learning setting. The participants were fifth graders (N = 176). The research followed a quasi-experimental design and used the subscale consumerism of the General Ecological Behaviour Scale and situational emotions (interest, well-being, boredom) to focus data collection activities. The study monitored the students’ knowledge increase and their Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scores as possible influencing factors on environmental behaviour. After participation in the programme, while we found that the students intended to consume in more environmentally friendlier ways, this intention did not persistent over a seven-week time span, nor did it relate to the INS or knowledge scores. There was, however, a high correlation with positive situational emotions like interest (r = .46, p ⩽ .001) and well-being (r = .39, p ⩽ .001), and a negative correlation with boredom (r = −.42, p ⩽ .001). We conclude that the ‘effect’ of the programme immediately measured after the intervention was strongly linked to situational (short-term) emotions, and should be considered in educational planning as well as the evaluation of sustainability teaching and learning.

Keywords:

• learning emotions
• education for sustainable development (ESD)
• intention–behaviour gap
• short-term intervention
• connectedness with nature