Adult Climate Change Education Advances Learning, Self-Efficacy, and Agency for Community-Scale Stewardship

Nelson, Sarah-Mae; Ira, Greg; Merenlender, Adina M.

doi:10.3390/su14031804

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Survey items to measure agency and self-efficacy were extracted from existing scales to ensure quantitative construct validity. Established scales used in research by Neumann, Martinez, and Martinez [68], and Nelson, Ira, and Merelender [69] aided in the measurement of both agency and self-efficacy. Two items from Doherty and Webler [40] were extracted to assist in the measurement of agency, whilst an item from Bostrom, Hayes, and Crosman [70] was utilised in the measurement of self-efficacy.…”

Section: Survey: Sampling Processing and Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connecting People with Science: A Proof-of-Concept Study to Evaluate Action-Based Storytelling for Science Communication

Smith,

Finkler,

Aitken

2023

Sustainability

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Many of the major environmental problems facing society remain intractable because members of the public neither perceive the relevance to them nor how their individual actions might help the situation. Post-consumer textile waste is one such disregarded problem, whereby disposal of waste from the fashion industry, especially the discarding of functional but out-of-fashion garments, releases significant greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Here, we used action-based storytelling as proof-of-concept of an innovative way to promote agency for climate action by showcasing pro-environmental behaviour through social modelling within stories. We evaluated the effectiveness of action-based storytelling in evoking agency, self-efficacy, and intention to increase second-hand clothing consumption. This research sought to identify if the choices faced by the story’s hero impacted these variables. The research is innovative in its use of a mixed-methods research methodology and community-based social marketing approach. Two focus groups identified consumer barriers to, and motivations for, second-hand clothing consumption in order to inform the development of three action-based storytelling videos (each with a different hero character: (i) a scientist, (ii) an influencer and (iii) students). A quasi-experimental survey evaluated how action-based storytelling and the different story heroes impacted participants’ levels of agency, self-efficacy, and intention. Results showed that participants’ levels of agency, self-efficacy, and intention significantly increased after watching the videos. Furthermore, the influencer hero was found to have the greatest effect on these variables. This research concludes that action-based storytelling can be an effective communication approach which demonstrates promising results in evoking agency and self-efficacy and increasing the likelihood that consumers will adopt pro-environmental behaviours.

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Section: Survey: Sampling Processing and Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connecting People with Science: A Proof-of-Concept Study to Evaluate Action-Based Storytelling for Science Communication

Smith,

Finkler,

Aitken

2023

Sustainability

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“…Several studies suggest that dramatic messages about future climate impacts can decrease feelings of self-efficacy, whereas information about future opportunities and behavioural changes can increase it 75,76 . Climate change education programmes have been shown to increase people's feelings of self-efficacy in the face of climate change and so presumably can help to avert the sometimes-deleterious effects of climate change information on well-being 77,78 .…”

Section: Review Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change affects multiple dimensions of well-being through impacts, information and policy responses

et al. 2022

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The consequences of climate change and responses to climate change interact with multiple dimensions of human well-being in ways that are emerging or invisible to decision makers. We examine how elements of well-being-health, safety, place, self and belonging-are at risk from climate change. We propose that the material impacts of a changing climate, discourses and information on future and present climate risks, and policy responses to climate change affect all these elements of well-being. We review evidence on the scale and scope of these climate change consequences for well-being and propose policy and research priorities that are oriented towards supporting well-being though a changing climate.Climate change is altering environments and societies in ways that affect what it is to be human. Psychosocial theories of well-being explain how people's feelings and functions depend on the way they relate to and are enabled and constrained by their environmental and social circumstances. Here we focus on a major body of evidence that shows how these circumstances are increasingly being affected by climate change in direct and indirect ways.We provide a survey of recent developments in research that shows how climate change affects human well-being and will increasingly do so. These developments are based on well-established framings that underpin psychosocial descriptions of human well-being. We offer a model of how well-being may be affected by climate change and use this as a framework to structure our survey of the social science research on human experiences of climate change.The analysis here draws on social psychology and applied social science research on climate risks that uses diverse methods ranging from epidemiological investigations to economic assessments to ethnographic studies on sense making and place [1][2][3][4] . Many studies are implicit about the nature of well-being, focusing on elements that are self-evidently part of the overall picture, such as individual health, nutrition and the absence or presence of physical risks. Many climate risk assessments recognize the limited nature of climate goals and raise concerns about narrow conceptions of material well-being 5 . This concern about the omission of well-being from the objectives and scope of climate policy is reflected in wider political debates.The Sustainable Development Goals, for example, are explicit that health and well-being for all at every stage of life (SDG3) is an overarching goal of policy. Diverse proposals of alternative measures of desirable policy objectives, from happiness to resilient communities, suggest at their core that human well-being could and should be a central objective of climate change science and policy.Here we therefore explicitly focus on long-established models of human well-being that expand the scope of climate science and policy to include more than the material and physical dimensions of climate change 6 . In this way we explain how the direct impacts of climate change, information about climate risks, an...

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“…The link between perceived threat and climate action is based on the assessment of the ability to cope with the threat, which can be described as self-efficacy, an important predictor of behavior (Bandura, 1983; Rainear & Christensen, 2022). Self-efficacy is confidence in one’s ability to successfully handle a situation or accomplish a task (Bandura, 1977; Nelson et al, 2022). Previous research has shown that promoting PEB such as recycling and waste prevention has a positive impact on perceptions of environmental harm (Fatima & Azhar, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pro-Environment Behaviors, Efficacy Beliefs, Perceived Individual and Social Norms: A Questionnaire Survey in a Sample of Young Adults From Pakistan

Acquadro Maran,

Butt,

Begotti

2023

SAGE Open

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The aim of this work was to examine the relationships between climate change experiences and perceived individual and social norms related to climate change, individual and collective efficacy, and implementation of pro-environmental behaviors among a group of young adults from Pakistan. We examined these variables among 373 young adults in Pakistan and differentiated them into those who reported direct experience with climate change and those who did not. Findings show that 179 participants felt they had directly experienced a climate change event. Results also show that they were more likely to follow individual and social norms, perceive higher levels of individual and collective efficacy, and were more likely to adopt pro-environmental behaviors. Among participants who reported having had a direct experience, perceived social norms and individual self-efficacy emerged as predictors of pro-environmental behaviors, whereas among participants who reported not having had a direct experience, only perceived social norms were significant predictors. These results underscore the importance of sharing information about good environmental practices.

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Adult Climate Change Education Advances Learning, Self-Efficacy, and Agency for Community-Scale Stewardship

Cited by 8 publications

References 60 publications

Connecting People with Science: A Proof-of-Concept Study to Evaluate Action-Based Storytelling for Science Communication

Connecting People with Science: A Proof-of-Concept Study to Evaluate Action-Based Storytelling for Science Communication

Climate change affects multiple dimensions of well-being through impacts, information and policy responses

Pro-Environment Behaviors, Efficacy Beliefs, Perceived Individual and Social Norms: A Questionnaire Survey in a Sample of Young Adults From Pakistan

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