Evaluation of an informational and behavior change program to increase students' self‐reported energy conservation

Abstract

A systematic evaluation of a program, consisting of sustainability education, self-management strategies, and feedback, to decrease college students' energy use was conducted. During treatment, the experimental group showed increased self-reported energy savings relative to baseline levels and relative to the self-reported energy use of the comparison group who were shown only an instructional video on conserving energy. Treatment gains were maintained at a 2-week follow-up. More participants in the experimental group rated their experience as resulting in learning something new about green issues and influencing their proenvironmental behavior compared to the comparison group. This study suggests that further research is warranted, specifically using these strategies in real-life situations.

Higher Education for Sustainability: A Critical Review of the Empirical Evidence 2013–2020

“…Other studies could not detect a change in attitude [60] or showed that students' attitudes changed towards anthropocentrism throughout their studies [145]. A similar picture emerges regarding the possible effect of sustainability content exposure on behavior: some studies did report a change towards, for example, pro-environmental behavior [48]. Others could not confirm such a trend [165] or showed that studying majors usually associated with sustainability challenges (e.g., engineering) was a negative predictor of "sustainability behavior" [148].…”

“…Piyapong [46] and Robinson [47] investigated the relationship between higher education and pro-environmental agency, measured by selfreported behavior. Several environmentally-oriented studies considered behavior change as an outcome of higher education-for example, Desrochers and Mosher [48] and Wisecup et al [49] explored ways to make students save energy, Ting and Cheng [50] sought to enhance pro-environmental behavior through guided learning, and Filter et al, (2020), investigated the effect of experiencing nature. A number of studies (2.5%, Figure 8) asserted that sustainability is multi-dimensional, only to concentrate on environmental aspects in learning content [51] or measured outcomes, e.g., [52].…”