Effect of GICTA on Adolescent Perceptions, Attitudes, and Behavioral Adaptations in Higher Secondary Education

The study investigated the effect of Green Information and Communication Technology Adoption (GICTA) on adolescents’ perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral adaptations regarding environmental sustainability at the higher secondary level. To determine causal relationships, a true experimental randomized pretest–post-test design was adopted. The sample comprised 84 adolescent boys and girls from schools of Kolkata, representing Science, Commerce, and Arts streams by one-to-one matched process to get equivalent experimental and control groups. A standardized questionnaire was used to collect data that measured perception, attitude and behavioral adaptation across the three environmental dimensions, i.e. pollution, energy efficiency and waste management. The experimental group received a structured GICTA-based intervention across 16 instructional sessions, while the control group received no intervention. Analysis of data was carried out using t-tests, ANOVA and MANOVA which demonstrated that GICTA produced significant and substantial improvements in perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral adaptations among adolescents, with large effect sizes in the experimental group and negligible changes in the control group. The intervention was gender-neutral, which effectively removed the pre-existing gender differences in all domains. Behavioral adaptation was found to have the highest gains, then attitudinal and perceptual changes. Stream-wise analysis showed that Science students had experienced the greatest gains, Commerce students had a neutral effect and Arts students had weaker results, with no significant interactions effects. Comprehensively, the results make GICTA an effective, comprehensive, and pedagogically viable method of instilling complete environmental adaptation in adolescents.