Franz X. Bogner1*
Bosque Rafael Suarez2- 1Department of Biology Education, Centre of Math and Science Education (Z-MNU), University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
- 2El Centro de Estudios de Educación Ambiental (CEEA-GEA), Universidad de Ciencias Pedagógicas de La Habana, Havana, Cuba
As Cuba achieves one of the lowest per capita ecological footprints in the world, the country’s overshoot day was on 1 December 2019, while some European countries already reach this limit in February (e.g., Luxembourg), monitoring the environmental preferences of the Cuban younger generation may offer valuable behavioral or pedagogical insights into such a society. As accepted standardized measures exist in the scales of 2-Major Environmental Values (2-MEV) and the General Ecological Behavior (GEB), both measures are following the necessary psychometric requirement, as they have the unique advantage of repeated independent confirmation (and thus provide an external validity). These captured 40 items of reported behavior originating in six subscales that total in a single main cover score. The first one (2-MEV) monitors individual biocentric and anthropocentric preferences with a 20 item-set by relying upon these two higher-order factors of “Preservation” (PRE) and “Utilization” (UTL). Although many language versions already exist (33 in the case of the 2-MEV) for verifying validities and reliabilities of both scales, a country such as Cuba may affirm that this is due to expected cultural differences as well as their exceptionally low global footprint. Additionally, neither the individual connectedness with nature nor the diurnal preferences within the linear structural model showed a substantial relationship to PRE or UTL. Nevertheless, all the regression scores follow the expected positive or negative directions, albeit not all the fit scores turned out as satisfactorily. Apparently, the applied measures secure a good basis for measuring the attitudinal and behavioral framework, but will need further fine tuning to completely monitor the environmental preferences of Cuban adolescents.
Introduction
Cuba is a country with one of the least ecological footprints per capita in the world (Global Footprint, 2020): The country’s overshoot day was on December 1, 2019, while European countries such as Germany have already reached this limit by May 3, March 5 in Belgium, or as early as February 16 in Luxembourg. Very few countries rate better than Cuba, such as Ecuador on December 12, 2019 (Global Footprint, 2020). Positioning humanity’s resource consumption into a calendar year illustrates best how the Earth’s resource capacity is overused; the allocated day points to the date when a country’s population is entering its environmental deficit spending (Catton, 1980). In consequence, the Cuban population is living at an almost sustainable level (although with a 1/12 over-usage), while Germany demands resources almost equivalent to three piles of the earth (i.e., 2.96!) (Global Footprint, 2020). Nevertheless, countries such as Germany during the last decades have almost halved their ecological footprints and thus show the effects of decision makers toward using up ecological resources of a country. Although for Cuba we do not have such historical data (and thus the progress history of limiting this threat), the current screenshot pattern is of help for educators to plan their interventions (e.g., van de Wetering et al., 2022) as applying the ecological footprint model illustrates the huge gap between human demand and regeneration potential (Blomqvist et al., 2013). Therefore, we, in different countries, are eating up the Earth’s future resources unequally in operating our current economies. Viewing the range of ecological footprints, Cuba seems to present a promising case, as the societal development of Cuba followed a different path compared to neighboring societies; although its annual GDP increased by 8.82 billion USD and wealth ranks 62nd out of 186 countries (retrieved 2020),1 its global footprint, ranks internationally as almost the best (Global Footprint, 2020). In consequence, the chance of the actuality of it achieving ecological sustainability is apparent.
To optimally intervene within this societal conflict, the understanding of a learning program’s effects on adolescent preferences is at least very helpful. In our case we did not yet focus on intervening with educational programs, nevertheless, the present study is planned to act as the basis for that. After decades of discussion about mechanisms to best monitor them (e.g., Kraus, 1995; Leeming et al., 1995), a bi-dimensional model was presented in allowing an individual a preservational and a utilitarian position within a higher order construct based on attitude-sets (Bogner and Wiseman, 1999). Such measures of attitude, toward nature and environment in the 2-Major Environmental Values (2-MEV model; Bogner and Wiseman, 1999, 2002a,2006), are overarched by UTL and PRE dimensions. Various European bi-national application studies with different cultural backgrounds (e.g., Bogner and Wiseman, 1998, 2002b; Bogner et al., 2015) assured its validity in limiting the item number to finally just 20. For this purpose, internal cross-validations studies contributed additional strength: (i) A first study brought risk-taking behavior into play (Bogner et al., 2000) in strongly supporting the two orthogonal dimensions: Controlled and cautious gamblers turned out to be high scorers on PRE, while Utilizers failed to control risk-taking behavior. (ii) A second study aligned the personality variables “Psychoticism,” “Extraversion,” and “Neuroticism” together with social desirability, again supporting an orthogonal, two-dimensional representation of both ecological values (Bogner and Wiseman, 2006): Utilizer preferred immediate self-orientated gratification, Preserver a delayed, otherwise-oriented gratification. (iii) A third study introduced Authoritarianism showing a negative correlation of Authoritarianism with PRE and a positive one with UTL (Wiseman et al., 2012).
Besides the described cross-validation studies, the ultimate strength of the 2-MEV model came from repeated independent confirmation studies: (i) Milfont and Duckitt (2004) from a mere psychometric point of view reassured the secondary higher-order structure of PRE and UTL from a purely psychometric point of view. (ii) Johnson and Manoli (2008) had this verified from an educational point of view when searching for an appropriate instrument for evaluating United States-wide earth education programs. (iii) Boeve-de Pauw and van Petegem (2011) assured the 2-MEV structure did this from a pedagogical point of view, while sufficiently assuring the two-dimensional structure as well. (iv) Borchers et al. (2013) coming from a psychological-pedagogical background for third-world sample size, also confirmed the two-factor second-order structure in a study conducted in West Africa. Finally, (v) Braun et al. (2017) reassured the scale’s validity for Asian samples. Furthermore, Bogner (2018) recently aligned assured the scale’s validity even when emotional appreciation of nature to the 2-MEV without losing the structure’s validity (Gooch, 1995; Casey and Scott, 2006; Kibbe et al., 2014; Sarner and Long, 2018; Torkar and Bogner, 2019). Currently, to our knowledge, the scale exists in 33 language versions all over the world.
Monitoring individual behavior has also seen many attempts prompting fierce discussions within psychology research for some time. Its assessment challenged psychology’s conventional wisdom as verbal claims are collected instead of actual behavioral observations (e.g., Ajzen, 1991; Stern, 2000; Vining and Ebreo, 2002). Kaiser et al. (2010), for instance, developed a measure containing a composite of various reported conservation behaviors. By employing this General Ecological Behavior (GEB) scale in a traditional planned behavior framework, its construct validity was corroborated with a virtually perfect intention-behavior link (Kaiser et al., 2007). Ecological behavior within this context is understood as action contributing toward environmental PRE by including behaviors such as recycling and composting, energy and water conservation, political activism, consumerism, commitment to environmental organizations, and so forth. The so-called GEB scale is favored as not being bound to a particular set of ecological behaviors or to a particular questionnaire response format (Lange and Dewitte, 2019). Although originally developed on the basis of six main behavioral preferences the GEB scale has been shown to cover essential facets of human behavior (Kaiser and Wilson, 2004). Subsequently, all sub-behaviors have been analyzed with respect to their relationships revealing a tremendous overlap of correlations. Kaiser and Wilson (2004) therefore suggested a merging of all subscale scores to one portraying the “GEB.” Similarly important, an age-appropriate modification made the GEB scale suitable for adolescents (Kaiser et al., 2007). Although many approaches are available in the literature (e.g., Sparksa et al., 2022), for the educational application we increasingly had built upon the GEB due to its specific age adjustment (Kaiser et al., 2007).
Connectedness with Nature is a simple measure, which repeatedly has shown its validity as the Inclusion of Nature in Self scale (INS) (Mayer and Frantz, 2004; Schultz et al., 2004; Liefländer et al., 2015). This is also true for its cultural context validity (e.g., Navarro et al., 2017). Some studies provided a convincing explanation about times in life at which a person is most susceptible to consolidating a strong connectedness to nature (e.g., Wells and Lekies, 2006; Ernst and Theimer, 2011): Especially young children, in general, have been shown highly connected with nature, just as high as environmental activists. Connectedness to nature is regarded to portray the interpersonal relationship between an individual and another person characterized by an overlapping of the cognitive representation of the self and another person. Visualizing this relationship repeatedly had shown its usability in educational contexts (Randler and Bogner, 2009; Kossack and Bogner, 2012; Sellmann and Bogner, 2013).
Circadian preferences are well-known to influence behaviors for given times of the day supporting an individual’s physical peak performances (Randler et al., 2017): Morning persons get up and go to bed early, while evening persons get up and go to bed late, thus, morning persons reach their peak performance during the morning, while evening people reach it during the afternoon or even during the night. A recent study with Irish school children monitored the relationships between the environmental values and MESC scale reporting a small gender difference and again some small positive correlations (Raab et al., 2018): Not surprisingly, “early birds” were shown to have better links to protective and appreciative attitudes toward nature.
The objectives of our current study were (i) to apply a combined attitudinal and behavioral questionnaire to a Cuban secondary school population and subsequently analyze the relationships of both constructs. (ii) To monitor variables such as connectedness (inclusion) with nature and the circadian preferences and relates them with (i) above, (iii) to conclude the field for appropriately preparing subsequent biodiversity implementation studies according to the Cuban adolescents.
Materials and procedures
Our sample consisted of 348 secondary school students (57.4% men, aged 14.9 years) of the urban Havana region. All participants completed the paper-and-pencil questionnaire once during school hours; the individual response sheets were digitalized via scanning and, if needed, by hand. The 2-MEV measure followed a five-point response pattern with “Strongly disagree, Disagree, Not sure/neutral, Agree, and Strongly Agree,” and the GEB measure followed a frequency response pattern of “Never, Seldom, Occasionally, Often, and Always (GEB). Both scales previously had shown their suitability to different languages and cultures within studies by different authors. The GEB is an instrument to assess self-reported behavior-based attitudes through Rasch modeling (Kaiser and Wilson, 2004). According to the Campbell paradigm, item difficulty and individual disposition affect attitudes and behavior (Kaiser et al., 2010), we applied the probabilistic Rasch measurement acknowledging individual engagement (number of items answered correctly) and item difficulty (number of people answering the item correctly) and eventually allocating each participant a logit (Bond and Fox, 2010). To conduct the Rasch analysis, we used the software ConQuest. The INS scale consisted of two circles intertwining with each other according to the individual’s estimate of its closeness with nature, the diurnal preferences were monitored with the scale of Randler et al. (2017).
Although our dataset was not normally distributed, due to the sample size we applied a parametric test as the Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS, 24 version) yielded identical results for all (non-) parametric calculations. We applied IBM SPSS AMOS 24 (Analysis of Moment Structures; Arbuckle, 1997) to calculate confirmatory factor analyses, to relate the attitudinal scales through path modeling in a multivariate context. All AMOS figures display standardized values and are based on the Maximum Likelihood Solution. We report absolute and incremental fit indices to estimate the adequacy of our postulated model. Hooper et al. (2008) recommended reporting the Chi-Square, the degrees of freedom, the p-value, the Root-mean-square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) as an incremental index, and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) as an absolute index. They asked for a low Chi-Square (χ2) in relation to the degrees of freedom with a non-significant p-value (p > 0.05). To take the sample size into consideration, we report the relative χ2 (CMIN/DF), which should be lower than 5. The CFI is recommended >0.9, and the RMSEA <0.07 (see Wheaton et al., 1977).
Results
To examine the first-order factors, the 2-MEV responses were subjected to a principal component analysis followed by oblique rotation (see examples Table 1) and were again subjected to principal factor analysis (PCA), revealing the expected structure of a PRE and UTL factor including the Appreciation subscales (as proposed in Bogner, 2018) (not shown here). The model was fitted using a simultaneous maximum likelihood second-order factor analysis via structural equation methods (see Arbuckle, 1997). The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (0.826) was high and the Bartlett-test of Sphericity was significant (p < 0.001) (Field, 2018). Hence we accepted the bi-factorial model of Bogner and Wiseman (1999, 2002a).
Table 1. Listing of the five best item examples of Preservation, Utilization, and Appreciation 2-Major Environmental Values (2-MEV) as well as reported ecological behavior General Ecological Behavior (GEB) with different difficulties.
In line with the original design of the instrument, we analyzed the data with the Rasch model (Figure 1). The fit of the 40 items scored with a mean MS of 1.14 (SD = 0.19). They lie within the cut-off levels of Bond and Fox (2010), who suggest 0.6 at the lower and 1.3 at the upper end. The fit statistics of persons are accepted as just 7.1% (n = 24) are not describable with the Rasch model. However, the reliability score of 0.53 is rather low in pointing to some failure to discriminate within the sample.
Figure 1. Rasch analyzed the distribution of the 40 General Ecological Behavior (GEB)-items pointing to a smooth fit- statistics (each X represents 2 students).
Given the two factor scores of PRE and UTL as well as the Rasch-scored Behavior score we plotted both correlation matrices unveiling the expected pattern: As the higher an individual scores in PRE the more likely he/she is to score higher in the behavior, versus the other way round for UTL, however, with a much lower correlation (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Correlation pattern of preservation vs behaviour and utilisation vs behaviour.
The subsequent path model (Figure 3) displays the Rasch analyzed GEB score in relation to the factor analyzed environmental value scores, the INS, the morningness–eveningness preference as well as gender. PRE and Appreciation provide the highest forecast scores, while almost all other variables contribute negligibly. Nevertheless, the model’s fit-data score is acceptable: Chi-square = 496.334; df = 169; p < 0.001, CMIN/DF = 2.923, CFI = 0.666, RMSEA = 0.074.
Figure 3. A path analysis of variables involved in the reported behavior General Ecological Behavior (GEB).
Discussion
The Cuban sample finding in principle is in line with earlier studies of a quite different country’s attitude-sets displayed often by results from other independent research groups (see details Introduction). Both scales have undergone a consequent development laying a solid theoretical foundation (e.g., Bogner and Wiseman, 2002a; Kaiser and Wilson, 2004; Bogner and Wiseman, 2006). For the 2-MEV, several binational applications assured a cultural stability (e.g., Bogner and Wiseman, 1998, 2002b) or a suitable rural/urban coverage (Bogner and Wiseman, 1997). Two studies have previously specifically applied the 2-MEV scale to third-world samples, Boeve-de Pauw and van Petegem (2011) in Guatemala and Vietnam as well as Borchers et al. (2013) in the Ivory Coast. Up to now, knowledge has come from 33 different language versions although many more may exist without publication (Bogner, 2018). In consequence, both scales overcome the frequent fundamental problem of empirical research contexts where agreed test instruments are commonly lacking and thus do not allow comparability of research study results. Nevertheless, for its valid application, each item must show that it is loading on the theoretically derived factor and is designed in the same way. Establishing just reliability or construct validity is often not justified as the assumption needs explicit proof by testing for factorial invariance (Milfont and Duckitt, 2004). Factorial invariance would point to a lack of equivalence of factors in both contexts: measurement invariance and structural invariance (Byrne et al., 1989). As measurement invariance assesses invariance tendencies of the basic model structure, factor loadings, and error variances, structural invariance does this with the invariance of factor variances, factor co-variances, and factor means.
The interrelationship of both scales has repeatedly shown its potential validity to grasp the adolescents’ preferences as well as its capacity to monitor and frame educational initiatives. First, it is important to highlight the stability of measures within various contexts (e.g., Johnson and Manoli, 2010; Schumm and Bogner, 2016; Kleespies and Dierkes, 2020; Maurer et al., 2020). This was even true for diverse cross-cultural contexts, for instance, as recently applied in China (Liu and Chen, 2019). Any educational initiative whether environmental education (EE) or education for sustainable development (ESD) aims to support the preferences of young people in order to oust our current anthropocentric way of life in favor of more eco-centric lifestyles. For generations, all human beings have been extracting wealth from nature with the intention of achieving continual growth:- with this as the underlying philosophy of all stakeholders. Moreover, the resulting destruction of natural habitats aligned with increasing worldwide pollution and environmental over-exploitation by human activities alongside increasing population densities has become obvious (Foley et al., 2005). Acquisition of natural resources for immediate human needs occurs at the expense of degrading natural and environmental conditions. As exponentially growing world populations are aligned with increasingly intensive land usage it places extraordinary pressure on ecosystems so alarming naturalists to seek a counteraction. Through many other channels, the awareness of young people must shoulder responsibility for slowing down or even stopping this exploitation (Bogner, 1999). Many grass-roots pioneers have laid (philosophical) foundations going back to Muir (1916) or Dewey (1929) or to Leopold (1949) or later on to Carson (1962) in order just to name some of the major forerunners.
Preservation and Appreciation positively affect an individual’s behavior which is quite in line with recent path analysis studies (Baierl et al., 2021b): The higher that subscale level is the more likely students are assigned to adopt more positive behavior. Attitudes level out performative costs (Bond and Fox, 2010) and assign themself to pro-environmental behavioral tendencies (Roczen et al., 2014; Allen et al., 2018). Compared to the strong pro-environmental preference the other monitored variables such as UTL, Inclusion with nature or morningness–eveningness-preferences provide negligible influence which is, in contrast, the recent studies (e.g., Jacobs and McConnel, 2022).
Even gender does not substantially explain the behavioral target variable. As the situation is balanced, some studies show an influence that others do not, and this relationship may fit into the literature body (e.g., Johnson and Manoli, 2008). This is even more likely as most recent studies came to the latter results which is lacking a gender influence. For instance, Baierl et al. (2021a) showed for a United States secondary school sample stronger relationships of fascination, motivation, or knowledge than gender or parental education contribute to it. Other studies such as Lau and Roeser (2002) similarly showed such a pattern. In other contexts, such as technology or science education, gender should also be considered as an important predictor which has made gender issues become frequent targets of research (Acker and Oatley, 1993; Evans et al., 2007; Mayer-Smith et al., 2000).
A major question in almost all related environmental education studies is the overall desire to redirect adolescent behavior in a more ecological direction (e.g., Hines et al., 1987; Leeming et al., 1995; Bogner, 1999; Schneller et al., 2015; Bissinger and Bogner, 2018) as educational approaches generally focus on its improvement (e.g. Liefländer and Bogner, 2014, 2018; Schneller et al., 2015; Bissinger and Bogner, 2018). Especially outdoor educational attempts presumably provide appropriate triggers to coping with that environmental challenge we doubtless face nowadays in the need to replace traditional exploiting approaches. Education in general, and especially environmental education, must build upon existing preferences, especially in a country such as Cuba (or Ecuador) with its marvelous low carbon footprints may offer new channels to monitor and understand promising channels to overcome this well-known dilemma. Pupils coming from a background less exploitative of nature are apparently more likely to offer sensitivity to appropriate educational access (e.g., Bogner and Wiseman, 1997). As the current environmental dilemma must be decoded as a conflict of traditions passed on to the young by cultural mechanisms, the overall background of extracting and exploiting for our own advantages may offer more likely chances for a society to achieve change. Follow-up studies with Cuban samples therefore may provide new insights into what educational programs will be more effective in achieving the desired shifts in paradigms. Within the view that Romance language cultures countries may see nature as mastered, without distinguishing between what is man’s fact and what is the fact of nature (Ducamre and Couvet, 2020), surprises are not unlikely. As a first steppingstone of information the further research line is twofold: First, to broaden the variable groundwork which, second, may allow researcher/educator to build upon a variability pool according to their specific educational foci.
Limitations
Although the study was conducted with great care, some limitations may apply. One methodological limitation is the survey group which was only from one representative sample, the selection of this group being concentrated on the urban capital region. Additionally, our study does not reflect the full age structure as the sampling was undertaken class-wise and school-wise. Another methodological limitation might arise from the use of shortened scales although in all subscales a clear structure appeared. Since the questionnaire was answered during regular courses, it was necessary to keep it as short as possible. Although the reliability, validity, and correct measurement were proven, it is possible that some information was lost due to that reduction. Additionally, the CFI value is very low given the limit of 0.9 in the methods section while the RMSEA value scores slightly above the mentioned limit. We regard both results as a limitation (internally explaining this with the small sample) but consider this information useful for upcoming further studies in Cuba.
Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Ethics statement
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Universidad de Ciencias Pedagógicas Enrique José Varona, de La Habana, Cuba. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.
Author contributions
BS initiated and supervised the data collection. FB completed the statistical analysis and initiated the first manuscript draft. Both authors cooperatively designed the study and contributed to the final version of the manuscript.
Funding
This study was partly supported by GEA-CEEA (El Centro de Estudios de Educación Ambiental) of UCPV and the Z-MNU (of the University of Bayreuth) as well by BAYLAT (914-20.1.1; Bayerisches Hochschulzentrum für Lateinamerika) and the HERZ-Foundation (Hamburg, #8500030).
Acknowledgments
We thank T. Baierl for helping with the SEM analysis, S. Tompkins for reading the manuscript, to C. Naranjo, M. Aguiar, S. Delgado, C. A. G. R. Cabrera, Y. G. Leon, K. L. A. Mora, A. B. Zardiñas, and J. L. A. Ross for assistance in collecting and handling the data.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Footnotes
References
Acker, S., and Oatley, K. (1993). Gender issues in education for science and technology: Current situation and prospects for. Can. J. Educ. 18, 255–272.
Allen, K. E., Quinn, C. E., English, C., and Quinn, J. E. (2018). Relational values in agroecosystem governance. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 35, 108–115. doi: 10.1016/j.cosust.2018.10.026
Baierl, T., Bonine, K., Johnson, B., and Bogner, F. X. (2021a). Biosphere-2 as an informal learning platform to assess motivation, fascination, and cognitive achievement for sustainability. Stud. Educ. Eval. 70:101061.
Baierl, T. M., Johnson, B., and Bogner, F. X. (2021b). Assessing environmental attitudes and cognitive achievement within 9 years of informal earth education. Sustainability 13:3622. doi: 10.3390/su13073622
Bogner, F. X., and Wiseman, M. (1998). Environmental perception of swiss and bavarian pupils. Swiss J. Soc. 24, 547–566.
Bissinger, K., and Bogner, F. X. (2018). Environmental literacy in practice: Education on tropical rainforests and climate change. Environ. Dev. Sustain. 20, 2079–2094.
Blomqvist, L., Brook, B. W., Ellis, E. C., Kareiva, P. M., Nordhaus, T., and Shellenberger, M. (2013). Does the shoe fit? Real versus imagined ecological footprints. PLoS Biol. 11:e1001700. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001700
Boeve-de Pauw, J., and van Petegem, P. (2011). A cross-cultural study of environmental values and their effect on the environmental behavior of children. Environ. Behav. 45, 1–32. doi: 10.1177/0013916511429819
Bogner, F. X. (1999). Empirical evaluation of an educational conservation programme introduced in Swiss secondary schools. Int. J. Sci. Educ. 21, 1169–1185.
Bogner, F. X. (2018). Environmental values (2-MEV) and appreciation of nature. Sustainability 10:350.
Bogner, F. X., and Wiseman, M. (1997). Environmental perspectives of Danish and Bavarian pupils: Towards a methodological framework. Scand. J. Educ. Res. 41, 53–71.
Bogner, F. X., and Wiseman, M. (1999). Towards measuring adolescent environmental perception. Eur. Psychol. 4, 139–151. doi: 10.1027//1016-9040.4.3.139
Bogner, F. X., and Wiseman, M. (2002a). Environmental perception: Factor profiles of extreme groups. Eur. Psychol. 7, 225–237.
Bogner, F. X., and Wiseman, M. (2002b). Environmental perception of French and some Western European secondary school students. Eur. J. Psychol. Educ. 17, 3–18. doi: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6
Bogner, F. X., and Wiseman, M. (2006). Adolescents’ attitudes towards nature and environment: Quantifying the 2-MEV model. Environmentalist 26, 247–254. doi: 10.1007/s10669-006-8660-9
Bogner, F. X., Brengelmann, J., and Wiseman, M. (2000). Risk-taking and environmental perception. Environmentalist 20, 49–62.
Bogner, F. X., Johnson, B., Buxner, S., and Felix, L. (2015). The 2-MEV model: Constancy of adolescent environmental values within an 8-year time frame. Int. J. Sci. Educ. 37, 1938–1952. doi: 10.1080/09500693.2015.1058988
Bond, T. G., and Fox, C. M. (2010). Applying the Rasch model: Fundamental measurement in the human sciences, 2nd Edn. New York, NY: Routledge.
Borchers, C., Boesch, C., Riedel, J., Guilahoux, H., Ouattara, D., and Randler, C. (2013). Environmental education in Côte d’Ivoire/West Africa: Extra-curricular primary school teaching shows positive impact on environmental knowledge and attitudes. Int. J. Sci. Educ. 4, 240–259. doi: 10.1080/21548455.2013.803632
Braun, T., Cottrell, R., and Dierkes, P. (2017). Fostering changes in attitude, knowledge and behavior: Demographic variation in environmental education effects. Environ. Educ. Res. 24, 899–920. doi: 10.1080/13504622.2017.1343279
Byrne, B. M., Shavelson, R. J., and Muthén, B. (1989). Testing for the equivalence of factor covariance and mean structures: The issue of partial measurement invariance. Psychol. Bull. 105, 456–466.
Casey, P. J., and Scott, K. (2006). Environmental concern and behaviour in an Australian sample within an ecocentric – Anthropocentric framework. Aust. J. Psychol. 58, 57–67.
Catton, W. R. (1980). Overshoot: The ecological basis of revolutionary change. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Ernst, J., and Theimer, S. (2011). Evaluating the effects of environmental education programming on connectedness to nature. Environ. Educ. Res. 17, 577–598. doi: 10.1080/13504622.2011.565119
Evans, G. W., Brauchle, G., Haq, A., Stecker, R., Wong, K., and Shapiro, E. (2007). Young children’s environmental attitudes and behaviors. Environ. Behav. 39, 635–658.
Field, A. P. (2018). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics: And sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ Roll. New York, NY: Sage Publcations.
Foley, J. A., DeFries, R., Asner, G. P., Barford, C., Bonan, G., Carpenter, S. R., et al. (2005). Global consequences of land use. Science 309, 570–574.
Global Footprint (2020). This year, earth overshoot day fell on July 28. Available online at: https://www.overshootday.org (accessed April 25, 2022).
Gooch, G. D. (1995). Environmental beliefs and attitudes in Sweden and the Baltic States. Environ. Behav. 27, 513–539.
Hines, J. M., Hungerford, H. R., and Tomera, A. N. (1987). Analysis and synthesis of research on responsible environmental behavior: A meta-analysis. J. Environ. Educ. 18, 1–8.
Hooper, D., Coughlan, J., and Mullen, M. R. (2008). Structural equation modelling: Guidelines for determining model fit. Electron. J. Bus. Res. Methods 6, 53–60. doi: 10.1037/1082-989X.12.1.58
Jacobs, T., and McConnel, A. R. (2022). Self-transcendent emotion dispositions: Greater connections with nature and more sustainable behavior. J. Environ. Psychol. 81:101797.
Johnson, B., and Manoli, C. (2008). Using Bogner and Wiseman’s model of ecological values to measure the impact of an earth education programme on children’s environmental perceptions. Environ. Educ. Res. 14, 115–127. doi: 10.1080/13504620801951673
Johnson, B., and Manoli, C. (2010). The 2-MEV scale in the United States: A measure of children’s environmental attitudes based on the theory of ecological attitude. Environ. Educ. Res. 42, 84–97. doi: 10.1080/00958964.2010.503716
Kaiser, F. G., and Wilson, M. (2004). Goal-directed conservation behavior: The specific composition of a general performance. Pers. Individ. Differ. 36, 1531–1544.
Kaiser, F. G., Byrka, K., and Hartig, T. (2010). Reviving Campbell’s Paradigm for attitude research. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 14, 351–367. doi: 10.1177/1088868310366452
Kaiser, F. G., Oerke, B., and Bogner, F. X. (2007). Behavior-based environmental attitude: Development of an instrument for adolescents. J. Environ. Psychol. 27, 242–251.
Kibbe, A., Bogner, F. X., and Kaiser, G. (2014). Exploitative vs. appreciative use of nature–Two interpretations of utilization and their relevance for environmental education. Stud. Educ. Eval. 41, 106–112.
Kleespies, M. W., and Dierkes, P. W. (2020). Exploring the construct of relational values: An empirical approach. Front. Psychol. 11:209. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00209
Kossack, A., and Bogner, F. X. (2012). How does a one-day environmental education programme support individual connectedness with nature? J. Biol. Educ. 46, 180–187.
Kraus, S. J. (1995). Attitudes and the prediction of behavior: A meta-analysis of the empirical literature. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 21, 58–75.
Lange, F., and Dewitte, S. (2019). Measuring pro-environmental behavior: Review and recommendations. J. Environ. Psychol. 63, 92–100.
Lau, L., and Roeser, R. W. (2002). Cognitive abilities and motivational processes in high school students’ situational engagement and achievement in science. Educ. Assess. 8:2. doi: 10.1207/S15326977EA0802_04
Leeming, F. C., Dwyer, W. O., and Bracken, B. A. (1995). Children’s environmental attitude and knowledge scale: Construction and validation. J. Environ. Educ. 26, 22–31.
Liefländer, A. K., and Bogner, F. X. (2014). The effects of children’s age and gender on acquiring pro-environmental attitudes through environmental education. J. Environ. Educ. 45, 105–117. doi: 10.1080/00958964.2013.875511
Liefländer, A. K., and Bogner, F. X. (2018). Educational impact on the relationship of environmental knowledge and attitudes. Environ. Educ. Res. 24, 611–624.
Liefländer, A. K., Bogner, F. X., Kibbe, A., and Kaiser, F. G. (2015). Evaluating environmental knowledge dimension convergence to assess educational programme effectiveness. Int. J. Sci. Educ. 37, 684–702.
Liu, W., and Chen, J. (2019). Modified two major environmental values scale for measuring chinese children’s environmental attitudes. Environ. Educ. Res. 26, 130–147. doi: 10.1080/13504622.2019.1697431
Maurer, M., Koulouris, P., and Bogner, F. X. (2020). Green awareness in action — How energy conservation action forces on environmental knowledge, values and behaviour in adolescents’ School Life. Sustainability 12:955. doi: 10.3390/su12030955
Mayer, F. S., and Frantz, C. M. (2004). The connectedness to nature scale: A measure of individuals’ feeling in community with nature. J. Environ. Psychol. 24, 503–515. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2004.10.001
Mayer-Smith, J., Pedretti, E., and Woodrow, J. (2000). Closing of the gender gap in technology enriched science education. Comput. Educ. 35, 51–63.
Milfont, T. L., and Duckitt, J. (2004). The structure of environmental attitudes: A first- and second-order confirmatory factor analysis. J. Environ. Psychol. 24, 289–303. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2004.09.001
Navarro, O., Olivos, P., and Fleury-Bahi, G. (2017). Connectedness to nature scale: Validity and reliability in the french context. Front. Psychol. 8:2180. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02180
Raab, P., Randler, C., and Bogner, F. X. (2018). How young “Early Birds” prefer preservation, appreciation and utilization of nature. Sustainability 10:4000.
Randler, C., and Bogner, F. X. (2009). Efficacy of two different instructional methods involving complex ecological content. Int. J. Sci. Math. Educ. 7, 315–337.
Randler, C., Faßl, C., and Kalb, N. (2017). From Lark to Owl: Developmental changes in morningness-eveningness from new-borns to early adulthood. Sci. Rep. 7:45874. doi: 10.1038/srep45874
Roczen, N., Kaiser, F. G., Bogner, F. X., and Wilson, M. (2014). A competence model for environmental education. Environ. Behav. 46, 972–992. doi: 10.1177/0013916513492416
Sarner, B., and Long, M. (2018). Climate change education with catholic ideals: Measuring knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. Educational studies. Capstone project. Saratoga Springs, NY: Skidmore.
Schneller, A. J., Johnson, B., and Bogner, F. X. (2015). Measuring children’s environmental attitudes and values in northwest Mexico: Validating a modified version of measures to test the Model of ecological values (2-MEV). Environ. Educ. Res. 21, 61–75.
Schultz, W. P., Shriver, C., Tabanico, J., and Khazian, A. M. (2004). Implicit connections with nature. J. Environ. Psychol. 24, 31–42.
Schumm, M. F., and Bogner, F. X. (2016). How environmental attitudes interact with cognitive learning in a science lesson module. Educ. Res. Int. 7:6136527. doi: 10.1155/2016/6136527
Sellmann, D., and Bogner, F. X. (2013). Effects of a 1-day environmental education intervention on environmental attitudes and connectedness with nature. Eur. J. Psychol. Educ. 28, 1077–1086.
Sparksa, A. C., Ehret, P. J., and Brick, C. (2022). Measuring pro-environmental orientation: Testing and building scales. J. Environ. Psychol. 81:101780.
Stern, P. C. (2000). New environmental theories: Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Soc. Issues 56, 407–424.
Torkar, G., and Bogner, F. X. (2019). Environmental values and environmental concern. Environ. Educ. Res. 25, 1570–1581.
van de Wetering, J., Leijeten, P., Spitzer, J., and Thomas, S. (2022). Does environmental education benefit environmental outcomes in children and adolescents? A meta-analysis. J. Environ. Psychol. 81:101782.
Vining, J., and Ebreo, A. (2002). “Emerging theoretical and methodological perspectives on conservation behavior,” in Handbook of environmental psychology, eds R. B. Bechtel and A. Churchman (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons), 541–558.
Wells, N. M., and Lekies, K. S. (2006). Nature and the life course: Pathways from childhood nature experiences to adult environmentalism. Child. Youth Environ. 16, 1–24.
Wheaton, B., Muthén, B., Alwin, D. F., and Summers, G. F. (1977). Assessing reliability and stability in panel models. Sociol. Methodol. 8, 84–136. doi: 10.2307/270754
Keywords: attitudes, values, 2-MEV, connectedness with nature, secondary school students, Rasch analysis, principal component analysis (PCA)
Citation: Bogner FX and Suarez BR (2022) Environmental preferences of adolescents within a low ecological footprint country. Front. Psychol. 13:894382. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.894382
Received: 11 March 2022; Accepted: 15 August 2022;
Published: 26 September 2022.
Edited by:
Inga Wittenberg, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, GermanyReviewed by:
Muhammet Usak, Kazan Federal University, RussiaPaul Wilhelm Dierkes, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Copyright © 2022 Bogner and Suarez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Franz X. Bogner, franz.bogner@uni-bayreuth.de