The importance of environmental education in the determinants of green behavior: A meta-analysis approach

This study moves toward a better understanding of the mechanisms behind people's green behavior with a general framework. A questionnaire was designed based on intrapersonal, motivational, interpersonal, and educational factors focusing on the environmental education as the main driver of the green behavior under a comprehensive theoretical framework. Our proposal is the CADMIACA model based on the theories of the Comprehensive Action Determination Model (CADM), other motivational and interpersonal ones (MI) and the Action Competence Approach (ACA). Additionally, this model contains a broad range of control conditions to be considered in the general definition of the determinants of green behavior such as global warming, energy savings, recycling, green purchasing, and pollution. The data were collected in the A Coruna metropolitan area (Spain) in order to analyze empirically the causal relationship among those variables included in the model by using structural equation methodology (SEM). Findings confirm that environmental education reveals as a powerful tool in order to generate green behavior among citizens. Moreover, the comprehensive CADMIACA model proposed appears to be a good fit with the data since all the factors included in this model (intrapersonal, motivational, interpersonal, and educational) are determining green behavior. However, environmental education and intrapersonal factors were revealed as the main drivers to predict green behavior whilst interpersonal and motivational factors were less common forms of shaping green behavior. Therefore, our results indicate that human behavior become a critical role in protecting the environment.