Can school environmental education programs make children and parents more pro-environmental?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jaime, Marcela; Salazar, Cesar; Alpizar, Francisco; Carlsson, Fredrik
• 署名单位: Universidad de Concepcion; Universidad del Bio-Bio; Wageningen University & Research; University of Gothenburg; University of Gothenburg
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103032
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: Environmental education; Marine plastic debris; Intergenerational learning; Randomized control trial; spillovers

摘要

We evaluate the direct and indirect effects of an environmental educational program with value-laded content on children's and parents' knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding the consumption and disposal of plastics.We do this using a randomized field experiment targeting fourth-grade children in Chile.The educational program had a sizeable and a positive impact on children' knowledge, attitudes, and practices, but no effect on parents' behavior.Heterogeneous effects indicate that the program had a larger effect among children in more vulnerable schools, but there was still no effect on parents.Finally, because parents may ultimately determine what con-stitutes acceptable behavior for children, promoting permanent changes in behavior will require interventions of this sort to be complemented with other initiatives targeting parents.