Measuring Environmental Attitudes of Undergraduate Sustainability Students

Abstract

Since 2013, the College of Sustainability at Dalhousie University has distributed an annual survey to students enrolled in classes offered by the Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS) program. One purpose of the survey is to measure students’ environmental attitudes using a standardized tool called the Revised New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale. This paper examines ESS students’ environmental attitudes across nine years (2013-2021) and compares students’ NEP scores between survey years, levels of education, faculties of study, and between the five dimensions of the NEP scale. ANOVA results demonstrate significantly lower NEP scores from first year students versus third year students, and significantly lower scores from Faculty of Management students in comparison to Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Science students. Significant differences in NEP scores are also present in two of the five dimensions of the scale: ‘Limits to Growth’ and ‘Eco-crisis.’ The ‘Limits to Growth’ dimension displays a significant decrease in NEP scores across nine years, the ‘Eco-crisis’ dimension displays a significant increase in NEP scores across nine years. The paper concludes by highlighting outdated themes and values within the NEP scale, and posits that a different attitude measurement scale could be more useful and relevant for measuring students’ environmental attitudes in future studies.