Environmental Education and Pro-environmental Consumer Behaviour – results of a university survey

The paper summarises findings of research carried out by the Department of Environmental Economics and Technology at Corvinus University of Budapest (CUB) during Autumn 2008. Our survey focused on the pro-environmental consumer behaviour and lifestyle patterns of 436 university students. The main assumptions of the research were that: (1) impacts of environmental education are reflected in the consumer behaviour of students; (2) courses on sustainability and environmental issues offered by the university significantly enlarge students’ environmental knowledge base – however, their attitudes are also shaped by several other factors; (3) reported environmental awareness and actual behaviour of respondents are usually not consistent. The trend is obvious: students tend to overstate their environmental awareness opposed to their real actions. Main features of everyday environmental activities and lifestyle were identified by factor analysis, which functioned as a basis for clustering the respondents. Clusters show a variety of lifestyle patterns: there were only very few students whose behaviour can be regarded as consistently sustainable. Compensation behaviour is widespread: non-sustainable consumption patterns are often counteracted by proenvironmental activities of a different kind. It is a true challenge for environmental education to address the student groups with different consumption and lifestyle patterns in order to motivate them towards more sustainable consumer behaviour.