What affects adolescents' willingness to maintain climate change action participation : An extended theory of planned behavior to explore the evidence from China

Abstract

Climate change is related to human well-being and the health of the planet. Education is a critical component of global action to mitigate climate change, and young people are future citizens in the fight against climate change. This article discusses the factors that affect adolescents' willingness to continue participating in climate change governance actions. First, based on an expansion of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the article conducts partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis on the data collected before adolescents participate in climate change education courses and clarifies the factors that significantly impact adolescents' behavioral willingness to participate in climate change governance actions. The results showed that emotions (EMO, β = 0.323) had the most significant effect on the willingness to engage in social good (SG) behaviors, followed by attitudes toward environmental protection (ATEP, β = 0.198) and pro-natural emotion (PNE, β = 0.123). Secondly, the researchers devised an exploratory climate change education curriculum and validated its efficacy through empirical research. The single group comparison of before and after lessons results shows that the exploratory climate change education curriculum can improve the scores of the nine measured factors. Higher effect sizes for attitudes toward environmental protection, confidence in protecting the environment, and pro-natural emotion. This study provides a reference theoretical framework and curriculum model for developing climate change education courses. Effective climate change education courses are crucial in improving youth climate literacy and guiding them to respond scientifically to climate change.