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Sustainability behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge: comparing university students and the general public

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Abstract

Sustainability science integrates many academic fields, requiring a broad understanding of diverse scientific concepts. Additionally, its focus on real-world issues means that researchers must also understand sustainability behaviors and attitudes. Research in this area, however, has primarily been conducted on university students with no demonstration of the generalizability of these findings. We compare the results from sustainability measures of behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge administered to a sample of university students (n = 1710) and the general public (n = 418). Independent t-tests revealed that university students reported significantly more sustainability behaviors, stronger attitudes, and greater knowledge than the general public sample. Demographic variables explained less variance in our outcome variables among the general public, suggesting that the factors that contribute to greater sustainability behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge differ between students and non-students. We suggest that sustainability scientists use caution when generalizing results obtained from university student samples.

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The survey instrument is included as supplementary material. The data is available upon request to the corresponding author.

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STATA code for data analysis is available upon request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Environmental Science and Policy program at Michigan State University, Dr. Joseph Hamm, and the class of Environmental Applications and Analysis in spring 2018.

Funding

This work was supported by the Environmental Science and Policy program at Michigan State University.

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Correspondence to Caitlin K. Kirby.

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Kirby, C.K., Zwickle, A. Sustainability behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge: comparing university students and the general public. J Environ Stud Sci 11, 639–647 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-021-00717-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-021-00717-x

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