Environmental literacy: study of knowledge as one of the components of environmental literacy – different types of environmental behavior are missing different types of knowledge

Abstract

Our environment is collapsing because of damaging human-activity encompassing mass-production and unsustainable behaviours. Both lead to dramatical problems on global scale such us global warming, air, water and land pollution, ice melting, increase of the level of the sea, deforestation and loss of animal species. During the past 50 years environmental literacy delivered through environmental education started to be considered as one of the solutions to solve environmental issues. Being an environmental literate citizen means having knowledge, attitudes, skills and responsible behavior towards the environment. This study focuses on the knowledge component and in particular on what type of knowledge people lack in different types of responsible behavior. It is supposed in the study that different kinds of behaviors such as recycling, conservatism behaviors and green-purchasing are not carried out properly by individuals because one of the barriers impeding the successful performance is represented by the lack of knowledge. The latter is not standardized as individual don’t lack the same knowledge for different activities. There are different types of knowledge missing in different types of behaviors. The aim of this research is to determine if the types of knowledge differ per behavior in order to provide a contribution to the existing literature and foster actions to make citizens behave sustainably delivering specific knowledge per each domain of behavior. This would be possible through targeted social marketing campaigns addressing the missing knowledge leading to responsible behavior and to a greater literate society. In these terms social marketing could be used as a mean for environmental education.