Young people’s understandings and attitudes towards marine debris: a systematic scoping review

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the findings of a systematic and rigorous scoping review of all relevant peer-reviewed literature published up until April 2020 focused on young people’s understandings and attitudes towards marine debris. The review of relevant literature reveals there are only limited peer-reviewed studies that engage with the issues of marine pollution from a child’s or young person’s perspective (n = 20). Findings show that the studies were diverse in aim and scope but generally clustered around three main themes: children and young people’s understandings and attitudes towards marine debris; their environmental awareness and knowledge following conservation activities and interventions; and finally behaviour change patterns reported following such interventions. It is our contention that further research addressing the long-term effects of marine debris environmental education programs developed by young people for young people will be of significant contribution to this scarce literature and field of inquiry.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• young people
• environmental education
• marine debris
• marine pollution
• pro-environmental behaviour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In order to scope as many studies as possible, the terms ‘children’, ‘young people’ and ‘youth’ are used interchangeably in this study and defined in the Methodology section.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Geographic Society; Southern Cross University: [Grant Number DVCR Industry seed grant scheme].