TY - JOUR
T1 - Voting for Change
T2 - an International Study of Students’ Willingness to Support Measures to Ameliorate Climate Change
AU - Skamp, Keith
AU - Boyes, Eddie
AU - Stanisstreet, Martin
AU - Rodriguez, Manuel
AU - Malandrakis, George
AU - Fortner, Rosanne
AU - Kilinc, Ahmet
AU - Taylor, Neil
AU - Choker, Kiran
AU - Shweta, Dua
AU - Ambusaidi, Abdullah
AU - Cheong, Irene
AU - Kim, Mijung
AU - Yoon, Hye Gyoung
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - Voting for various pro-environmental governmental policies is an indirect, but potentially effective, action that citizens can take to reduce global warming (GW) and climate change. Supporting further environmental education is an additional action. This study reports students’ beliefs about the effectiveness of these indirect actions in reducing GW and their willingness to support such actions (e.g. increased taxes). Students’ responses (n > 12,000 grades 6 to 10 from 11 countries) to a specially designed questionnaire are reported. Links between their beliefs and their willingness to act were quantified using a range of novel derived indices. Significant disparities between beliefs and willingness to act were found across the various countries. The focus of this paper is the derived index, the Natural Willingness to Act (NWA). Interpretations are proffered for the reported differences between countries. The extents of students’ concern and self-reported knowledge about global warming strongly correlate with NWA values, as do their cultural orientations, and other contextual factors (e.g. governmental trust). Pedagogical implications and ways forward are suggested.
AB - Voting for various pro-environmental governmental policies is an indirect, but potentially effective, action that citizens can take to reduce global warming (GW) and climate change. Supporting further environmental education is an additional action. This study reports students’ beliefs about the effectiveness of these indirect actions in reducing GW and their willingness to support such actions (e.g. increased taxes). Students’ responses (n > 12,000 grades 6 to 10 from 11 countries) to a specially designed questionnaire are reported. Links between their beliefs and their willingness to act were quantified using a range of novel derived indices. Significant disparities between beliefs and willingness to act were found across the various countries. The focus of this paper is the derived index, the Natural Willingness to Act (NWA). Interpretations are proffered for the reported differences between countries. The extents of students’ concern and self-reported knowledge about global warming strongly correlate with NWA values, as do their cultural orientations, and other contextual factors (e.g. governmental trust). Pedagogical implications and ways forward are suggested.
KW - Climate change
KW - Environmental action
KW - Environmental education
KW - Political action
KW - Socio-scientific issues
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068878027&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85068878027&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11165-019-09864-2
DO - 10.1007/s11165-019-09864-2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068878027
SN - 0157-244X
VL - 51
SP - 861
EP - 887
JO - Research in Science Education
JF - Research in Science Education
IS - 3
ER -
