Environmental Values and Technology Preferences of First-Year University Students

Abstract

Environmental and technological preferences correlate. Both are empirically accessible via established instruments such as the Two Major Environmental Value model (2-MEV) with “preservation” (PRE) and “utilization” (UTL), and the technology questionnaire with “interest in technology” (INT) and “social aspects of technology” (SOC). Additionally, “appreciation of nature” (APR) was monitored with a seven-item scale. We used these instruments to assess the preferences of freshmen in five different areas of study (law, economics, science, pedagogy, cultural studies). All subsequent analyses unveiled positive relations between appreciation and preservation, between the two technology subscales, as well as between utilization and social aspects of technology. Negative relationships appeared between preservation and utilization, preservation and both technology factors, as well as appreciation and social aspects of technology. In all subsamples, preservers (individuals with preservation preferences) showed little interest in technology or its social aspects; utilizers scored high in social aspects of technology, whereas appreciators displayed no interest in it. The freshmen’s areas of study seem to predict consistent tendencies to (biocentric) preservation or (anthropocentric) utilization. Moreover, females were more likely to preserve and appreciate nature whereas males preferred utilization along with interest in technology as well as in the social implications of technology. The observed differences can be used to develop new and improve existing educational programs; recommendations are discussed.

Modern Technology in Geography Education—Attitudes of Pre-Service Teachers of Geography on Modern Technology

“…Furthermore, no differences in gender can be identified in the other two dimensions (LOC, BAE). In many other studies, different aspects and psychometric areas of attitudes towards technology were examined, and here too the results with regard to the gender differences were ambivalent [43,66,72,76]. In the long series of studies on this subject, this now is the first that suggests that the differences between male and female attitudes may only be reflected on certain levels of attitude and not in an overall view.…”

“…According to our findings, choice of the subject such as natural sciences, human and social sciences, or geography as some kind of cross-over does not show any influences on any level of the student's MT attitudes. In previous studies, differences in social or emotional attitudes towards technology were found, depending on the subject [45,76]. Additionally, for example, a higher technophobia was measured among teachers in human science subjects [59].…”

“…(Islahi 2019, p. 45) [43] Ceyhan and Sahin (2018) [45] came to a similar result for teachers' technological knowledge. Stöckert et al (2020) [76], on the other hand, report findings of significant gender differences within pre-service teachers and other university students, when it comes to social aspects or interests related to technology.…”

“…When it comes to measuring teachers' attitudes towards MT, in particular, instruments are scarce. Some limit their research to certain technological areas or contexts such as information technologies [29,43] or social aspects of technology [66,76] or focus on the use of mobile devices [86] and computers only [74,87,88].…”

“…Two frequently used instruments here are the Pupil's Attitude Towards Technology (PATT) Scale [64,65,89,93], which was not developed for the target group of teachers and is therefore not very suitable, as well as the short Technology Questionnaire (sTQ, Marth 2019) [66], which, however, is less substantial as it depicts only two dimensions for this study. The few instruments used to examine teachers' relations towards technology, on the other hand, either focus on their sensitivity, intentions, interest, or thoughts [45,76,[94][95][96], rather than the dimensions of their actual attitudes.…”