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

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Listed:
  • Jaime, Marcela
  • Salazar, César
  • Alpizar, Francisco
  • Carlsson, Fredrik

Abstract

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 constitutes acceptable behavior for children, promoting permanent changes in behavior will require interventions of this sort to be complemented with other initiatives targeting parents.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaime, Marcela & Salazar, César & Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik, 2023. "Can school environmental education programs make children and parents more pro-environmental?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:161:y:2023:i:c:s0304387822001742
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103032
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental education; Marine plastic debris; Intergenerational learning; Randomized control trial; Spillovers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

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