Attitudes and Environmental Citizenship

Abstract

In this chapter, we analyse how attitudes and Environmental Citizenship are related to each other. When discussing Environmental Citizenship, it has often been defined as the outcome of environmental education. With little knowledge and a lack of models, it is difficult to show how the transformation or formation of environmentally aware citizens would take place. The chapter focuses mainly on the individual level to describe factors that influence Environmental Citizenship, although we are aware that several societal and community level factors influence it as well. Other research on Environmental Citizenship revealed that practices that seek to only change individual behaviour or a student's content knowledge about environmental problems will fall short of cultivating Environmental Citizenship. Some scholars expect that deliberative democracy would lead towards creating values and principles rooted in Environmental Citizenship, while others expect environmental education to be successful in this endeavour but both fail to articulate and explain the ways of how Environmental Citizenship develops and what is needed to achieve it.