Environmental knowledge and conservation behavior: Exploring prevalence and structure in a representative sample

Abstract

Knowledge is commonly seen as a necessary precondition for a person's behavior. Consistent with this, most educational interventions rely on knowledge transfer. However, for the most efficient informational strategies for education, it is essential that we identify the types of knowledge that promote behavior effectively and investigate their structure. A questionnaire consisting of three environmental knowledge scales and a conservation behavior measure was sent to 5000 randomly selected Swiss adults. A completed questionnaire was returned by 55% of them (N = 2736). A series of structural equation analyses indicates that the three knowledge forms exert different influences on conservation b..