Linking environmental knowledge, attitude, and behavior with place: a case study for strategic environmental education planning in Saint Lucia

Abstract

This case study investigated whether and how urban/rural differences may impact environmental knowledge, attitude, and action levels of the youth to better understand the linkage between place and environmental behavior. A nation-wide survey was conducted in Saint Lucia, targeting secondary school students. A total of 1,349 self-reported questionnaire samples were collected and the results were compared between sex (male/female), age (younger/older), and location (urban/rural) groups using three-way ANOVA tests. Significant urban–rural differences as well as interactions between location and age, and location and sex factors, were found. A path analysis further confirmed that location had a significant direct impact on students’ knowledge, and indirect impacts on attitude and action levels via age factor. We discuss the impact of living place on students’ environmental characteristics, and how environmental education (EE) can incorporate such perspective in its design. We believe that the obtained insights are useful for making EE more effective.

Keywords:

• Environmental education
• place
• knowledge-attitude-behavior (KAB) model
• student
• Saint Lucia
• GIS

Acknowledgements

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or nonprofit sectors. We would like to express our deep gratitude to the reviewers for their dedication and constructive comments which greatly helped refine this paper. The first author would like to thank the Government of Saint Lucia and Japan International Cooperation Agency for supporting the survey conducted in this study during the author’s assignment under the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers Program in 2013-2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated for this study are available upon request to the corresponding author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Momoe Kanada

Dr. Momoe Kanada is an independent researcher. She conducted this study while she was a PhD candidate at the University of Tsukuba.

Paul Norman

Dr. Paul Norman is Associate Professor of School of Geography, University of Leeds.

Naoko Kaida

Dr. Naoko Kaida is Associate Professor of Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba.

Steve Carver

Dr. Steve Carver is the Director of Wildland Research Institute, University of Leeds.