Environmental Education and Attitudes: Emotions and Beliefs Are What Is Needed

The main focus of environmental education programs has been to change environmental behavior through increasing environmental knowledge. As many environmental studies have failed to apply successfully attitude theory in researching environmental attitudes, the present study investigated the cognitive and affective bases of environmental attitudes to indicate that it is what people feel and believe about the environment that determines their attitudes toward it. The findings suggest that for environmental educators interested in changing environmental attitudes, emotions and beliefs, rather than knowledge, need to be targeted as sources of information on which to base their environmental programs.