EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION ON PLACE ATTACHMENT AND RESPONSIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOUR

Crises currently encountered by humans, including ecological crises resulted economy, food, and the following social crises, are closely related to humans' cognition, value, and attitudes. For this reason, deeply understanding students' environmental awareness supplemented by teaching with strict curriculum mapping and design to reinforce students' environmental knowledge is the way to cope with current extreme climate change. Once students realise the environmental education content and are aware of the importance, they could enhance the responsible environmental behaviour through actual life experience and learning. Using experimental design model for the experimental research, total 214 students of a university in Taipei City, as the research objects, are preceded the environmental education experiment with 3 h per week for 16 weeks (total 48 h). The research results show positive effects of: (1) environmental education on place attachment; (2) environmental education on responsible environmental behaviour as well as (3) remarkably positive effects of place attachment on responsible environmental behaviour. According to the results to propose suggestions, it is expected to enhance students' motivation and interests through environmental education for acquiring place knowledge and emotional attachment and to cultivate students' responsible environmental behaviour.