Marine environmental awareness among university students in Taiwan: a potential signal for sustainability of the oceans

Abstract

University students are regarded as future decision-makers in society and have a high likelihood of becoming opinion-shapers in terms of the environment. Their awareness of the marine environment will therefore have a significant effect upon sustainable marine development. This study examines Taiwanese university students' marine environmental awareness, focusing on environmental attitudes, understanding of marine and coastal issues, and environmental behavior. A total of 825 valid samples in a questionnaire survey are used for the analysis. Overall, respondents possess a highly positive attitude towards the marine environment and a moderate self-reported level of marine knowledge, but are not actively engaged in environmental protection endeavors, particularly ones involving spending personal income and taking legal or political action. Experience in marine-related activities and marine knowledge are important in fostering marine environmental awareness, particularly in regard to environmental behavior. This study addresses the gap between widespread environmental concerns and low engagement in environmental actions by proposing a multimodal approach: improving marine knowledge and experience in marine-related activities, creating safe recreational spaces at seasides, and reinforcing legal education. This study concludes by highlighting the importance of marine environmental awareness in the development of ocean citizenship as well as the sustainability of the marine environment.

A Change of Mind: Applying Social and Behavioral Research Methods to the Assessment of the Effectiveness of Ocean Literacy Initiatives

“…Existing perceptions of the public and other actors on relative importance of pressures on the marine environment, and concern regarding impacts have received attention (Gelcich et al, 2014;Potts et al, 2016;Buckley et al, 2017). Pre-existing pro-environmental behaviors undertaken by people have also been studied, as well as the relationship between level of knowledge, concern and the existing behaviors or actions undertaken (Muderrisoglu and Altanlar, 2011;Chen and Tsai, 2016). However, the effect of an ocean literacy initiative on behavior change objectives, for a given audience or actor are rarely assessed, despite the availability of behavioral and social science methods to achieve this (Hartley et al, 2015(Hartley et al, , 2018aPahl and Wyles, 2017).…”

Measuring ocean literacy in pre-service teachers: psychometric properties of the Greek version of the Survey of Ocean Literacy and Experience (SOLE)

“…The small body of studies conducted before the ocean literacy movement in 2004, have focused on students and have taken place mostly in the USA (Fortner and Teates 1980;Fortner 1985;Fortner and Mayer 1989;Howick 1991;Brody 1996;Lambert 2005), as well as in other countries such as the UK (Revell, Stanisstreet, and Boyes 1994), Canada (Cummins and Snivelly 2000), South Africa (Ballantyne 2004), andIsrael (Ben-Zvi-Assarf andOrion 2005). Among the few studies having been conducted after 2004, the focus has also been on students (Greely 2008;Marrero 2009;Plankis and Marrero 2010;Kim 2014), as well as on the general public in the USA (Steel et al 2005;Fletcher et al 2009;Hynes, Norton, and Corless 2014), on high school students in Canada (Guest, Lotze, and Wallace 2015), university students in Taiwan (Chen and Tsai 2015) and pre-service teachers in Greece (Boubonari, Markos, and Kevrekidis 2013). The paucity of relevant studies underline the necessity to measure the level of knowledge of ocean sciences issues in various cultures and target groups.…”

Valuing environmental education as a cultural ecosystem service at Hudson River Park

“…A sanguine view is that, over time, environmental education can lead to a deeper understanding of the tradeoffs among protection and development, supporting collective decisions that help to conserve beneficial ecosystem services (Vaughan et al, 2002;Sodhi et al, 2010;Tisdell, 2013). Too, as a means for promoting environmental stewardship, science-based, outdoor education is recognized as central to sustainable development (Hungerford and Volk, 1990;Chen and Tsai, 2015). With intensifying existential threats to the biosphere, such as climate change, natural hazards, and nutrient deposition and runoff, interest in environmental education has been growing strongly (Sauvé, 1996;AGEDI, 2016).…”