An analysis of the change in general attitudes towards the environment of Spanish youth

• Autor(a) principal: Manassero-Mas, María Antonia
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Vázquez-Alonso, Ángel
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: spa
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34624/id.v15i1.32279

The 21st century has been fertile in contributions and initiatives for the conservation and sustainability of the environment, but its effects on the youngest are relatively unknown, because the environmental surveys, usually focused on adults, exclude them from its sample. On the other hand, environmental education has become a transversal objective of teaching, although with different intensities and orientations. This study presents a diagnosis of the environmental attitudes of 15-year-old Spanish high school students through a questionnaire and analyses their change since the beginning of the 21st century, as well as gender differences. The results show a globally positive attitude towards the environment and identify the traits that have got the highest and lowest less agreement rates. In addition, the change in environmental attitudes since the beginning of the 21st century is not globally significant, although there are two exceptions: current students express a greater degree of hopelessness regarding the environmental future and hold that rich countries are less responsible of environmental problems. The gender differences show that girls have better environmental attitudes than boys, and these differences are large in two specific traits: the willingness to solve environmental problems, even if this means sacrificing many goods, and that people should care more to protect the environment. Finally, the results are discussed within the framework of other studies and some recommendations are proposed so that scientific education contributes to improving environmental attitudes for sustainability.