Marine environmental awareness among university students in Taiwan: a potential signal for sustainability of the oceans

Abstract

University students are regarded as future decision-makers in society and have a high likelihood of becoming opinion-shapers in terms of the environment. Their awareness of the marine environment will therefore have a significant effect upon sustainable marine development. This study examines Taiwanese university students’ marine environmental awareness, focusing on environmental attitudes, understanding of marine and coastal issues, and environmental behavior. A total of 825 valid samples in a questionnaire survey are used for the analysis. Overall, respondents possess a highly positive attitude towards the marine environment and a moderate self-reported level of marine knowledge, but are not actively engaged in environmental protection endeavors, particularly ones involving spending personal income and taking legal or political action. Experience in marine-related activities and marine knowledge are important in fostering marine environmental awareness, particularly in regard to environmental behavior. This study addresses the gap between widespread environmental concerns and low engagement in environmental actions by proposing a multimodal approach: improving marine knowledge and experience in marine-related activities, creating safe recreational spaces at seasides, and reinforcing legal education. This study concludes by highlighting the importance of marine environmental awareness in the development of ocean citizenship as well as the sustainability of the marine environment.

Keywords:

• awareness
• marine environment
• sustainability
• university students
• Taiwan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This committee serves as an advisory unit to Taiwan’s highest administration agency – the Executive Yuan.

2. Art. 1(3). The full name of Fish Stock Agreement is ‘Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks’. The Agreement was adopted on 4 August 1995 and entered into force on 11 December 2001.

3. Art. 9(2) and Annex I.

4. For more information on the IUCN Red list, refer to the website www.iucnredlist.org.

5. These 70 universities do not include ones which specifically feature military, police, or occupational educational programs.

6. MIL-STD-105E is an American defense standard that provides procedures and tables for sampling by attributes. More information is available at archive.org/details/MIL-STD-105E_1.

7. It is noted that the returned questionnaires include a small number of respondents who have an academic major relating to marine science or marine engineering. These respondents were considered to know more about marine and coastal issues. To avoid the potential bias in measuring the variables (i.e. attitude, knowledge, and behavior) caused by them, their questionnaires were ruled out.

8. It is noted that attitude scores of negative statement items were inversely transformed.

9. More information of the Blue Flag Campaign is available at www.blueflag.org.