Moving Beyond the One-Size-Fits-All Model in Describing the Climate Conserving Behaviors of Malaysian Secondary Students

Nur Sabrina Mohamed Ali Khan, Mageswary Karpudewan and Nagaletchimee Annamalai
Additional contact information
Nur Sabrina Mohamed Ali Khan: School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11800, Malaysia
Mageswary Karpudewan: School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11800, Malaysia
Nagaletchimee Annamalai: School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11800, Malaysia

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: The acceleration of average temperature of lands and oceans, rising sea level, frequent extreme weather events and ocean acidification denote that climate change is a contemporary pressing dilemma facing the world. Everyday human activities such as open burning, deforestation, burning of fossil fuels and agricultural activities significantly contribute to Earth warming. Preventing the aforementioned activities reduce the greenhouse gas emission to the atmosphere and subsequently slows the changes in climate. Thus, climate change education is integral to educate people on the destructive consequences of their actions to the climate. Past studies revealed that well-established theories and models guided the designing of education to deliver behavioral change in many countries and reportedly improved participants’ knowledge, attitude and motivation. However, these theories and models exist as an after effect of the education and the long-term impact of the initiative frequently not found and less information available on the sustainability of such education. Additionally, effective climate change education is typically context-based and designed based on factors related to local students’ behavior. Hence, this study examined how knowledge and psychological factors such as belief and motivation explain the formation of climate conserving behavior among secondary school students. A total of 221 questionnaires was distributed to 14 years old Malaysian secondary school students to measure knowledge, motivation and belief. The data obtained were later analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach. The findings revealed that knowledge (β = 0.259, p < 0.05), belief (β = 0.295, p < 0.05) and motivation (β = 0.546, p < 0.05) positively affects the behavior. These findings reflected that knowledge, belief and motivation collectively explain a total of 65.5% of variances in the formation of climate conserving behavior among Malaysian secondary school students.

Keywords: belief; climate conserving behaviors; climate change knowledge; secondary school students; self-determined motivation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/18/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/18/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2020:i:1:p:18-:d:466415

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().