Environmental Education and Sustainable Consumption: The education of future environmental managers [4]

Environmental Education and Sustainable Consumption: the future education of environmental managers

Presenters: Zsuzsanna Marjainé Szerényi, PhD, Head of the Department of Environmental Economics and Technology, Associate Professor
Ágnes Zsóka PhD, Senior Assistant Professor

Our presentation summarises the main findings of a research carried out by the Department of Environmental Economics and Technology at Corvinus University of Budapest (CUB). The survey focuses on the pro-environmental consumer and everyday behaviour of 436 university students and its relationship to environmental education. The main objective of the research is to find out whether studying environment-related subjects or having environmental specialisation as major or minor makes a difference in the environmental awareness of students as a result. Te survey aims at testing participants’ knowledge, attitudes and actual behaviour related to the environment.

Main assumptions of the research are the following:
(1) Impacts of environmental education are obviously reflected in consumer behaviour of students: those studying environmental subjects more intensively, are more environmentally conscious in their actions. Five groups of students were surveyed possessing definitely different features regarding environmental knowledge background and motivations. A sixth and seventh group are used as control group not studying any environment-related subjects before.
(2) Subjects offered by the university significantly enlarge students’ environmental knowledge basis, however, their attitudes are shaped by various other factors. At CUB, several subjects deal with issues of sustainability and environmental problems. However, student’s behaviour is influenced by a lot of other motivations and obstacles as well which influence their behaviour.
(3) Reported environmental behaviour and real environmental awareness of respondents are usually not consistent. The survey contains several control questions to test the consistency of respondents’ answers. The trend is obvious: students tend to say more about their environmental awareness which does not always appear in their real actions.

The findings of the research can be used for both evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of environmental education and realising the main necessities to improve, as well as to describe environment-related consumer behaviour of students and to reveal the main reasons behind.

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