Janmaimool, P.; Chudech, S. Effect of Domestic and Global Environmental Events on Environmental Concern and Environmental Responsibility among University Students. Sustainability2020, 12, 1610.
Janmaimool, P.; Chudech, S. Effect of Domestic and Global Environmental Events on Environmental Concern and Environmental Responsibility among University Students. Sustainability 2020, 12, 1610.
Janmaimool, P.; Chudech, S. Effect of Domestic and Global Environmental Events on Environmental Concern and Environmental Responsibility among University Students. Sustainability2020, 12, 1610.
Janmaimool, P.; Chudech, S. Effect of Domestic and Global Environmental Events on Environmental Concern and Environmental Responsibility among University Students. Sustainability 2020, 12, 1610.
Abstract
Recently, both global and domestic environmental events have been occurring more frequently, bringing catastrophic consequences to humans and the environment. These adverse events have caused widespread concern among the general public. In positive terms, these devastating events could potentially enhance people’s environmental awareness, which, in turn, could instill a greater sense of environmental responsibility. This study aims to investigate how university students concern themselves with global and domestic catastrophic environmental events and to examine how global and domestic environmental concerns mediate the effect of environmental knowledge and attitudes on university students’ environmental responsibility. Students of King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi in Bangkok, Thailand were selected as the participants. A simple random technique was applied to select the research participants. Questionnaire surveys with 863 students were carried out during September–October 2019. A path analysis was performed to test how global and local environmental concerns mediate the effect of environmental knowledge and attitudes on university students’ environmental responsibility. The results demonstrated that domestic environmental concerns, taken alone, contributed less to the students’ sense of environmental responsibility. Domestic environmental concerns had a stronger effect on environmental responsibility when taken together with global environmental concerns. In addition, both domestic and global environmental concerns could help transform environmental knowledge and attitudes into environmental responsibility. Only environmental attitudes had no direct effect on responsibility. These results show that domestic and global catastrophic environmental events could raise students’ levels of concern for the environment, and, ultimately, enhance their sense of responsibility to protect the environment.
Keywords
global environmental concerns; domestic environmental concerns; environmental attitudes; environmental responsibility
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
