Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Generating behavior change for transformation toward sustainability is a significant challenge of our time. The United Nations’ Agenda 2030 comprises seventeen global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A key question is how to promote pro-environmental behavior to achieve the SDGs. Multiple factors have been found to influence pro-environmental behavior, including affect, environmental concerns, and environmental knowledge. To date, the relationship between these factors is still unclear. We have conducted an experiment in the Botanical Garden at the University of British Columbia, to determine how a sustainability education program and affect influence pro-environmental behavior. A particular aspect of affect which we are examining is arousal, the state of being physiologically alert and attentive. Participants were randomly assigned to spend time in the garden (nature condition), go on a tree-top canopy walk (nature+arousal condition), go on a tree-top canopy walk and receive sustainability education (nature+arousal+education condition), or a control condition where they did neither. In the education condition, participants received verbal and interactive education from instructors on the SDGs. Our results suggest that participants in the education condition were the more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior than those in the other conditions. This raises a potential that the education program can be an effective tool to mobilize public engagement on sustainability. The results of this research can help inform the value of education and nature in a botanical garden in encouraging pro-environmental behavior, in order to understand how behavior change tools can be designed to foster action to achieve the SDGs.