其他摘要 | With increasing environmental concerns, China has become the largest waste producer in the world. How to reduce waste and promote resources recycling have become a focus or research in many disciplines. Commitment has been proved to be a powerful tool in shaping individual behavior. However, previous research has indicated that commitment strategies are difficult to implement on a large scale; that their impact is difficult to extend to other social groups; and that it is difficult to ensure the accuracy of behavioral implementation while promoting participation. Research on commitment to promoting pro-environmental behavior has mainly been carried out in developed countries, with little in-depth theoretical research and practical exploration in China. Meanwhile, few studies have focused on the role of children in promoting recycling through commitments. According to the bidirectional theory of parent-child relationships, young people or children can transmit their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors to their parents. Therefore, how commitment strategies and intergenerational influences could be used to promote pro-environmental behavior in a local Chinese context needs to be further explored.
This longitudinal intervention study innovatively combined commitment with three additional intervention strategies (i.e., educational activities, copy, and intergenerational learning), which allowed the study to remedy the limitations of commitment, bridge the gaps in previous research, and achieve better intervention effects. The present study addressed two research questions. Would commitment-based interventions have a positive influence on children's recycling knowledge and behavior? Would commitment-based interventions have a positive intergenerational influence on family members' relative knowledge and behavior? Therefore, we fully explored the short and long term effects of commitment and innovative approaches on children's and parents' knowledge and behavior, seeking practical and effective ways to promote household sorting and recycling.
This field study adopted explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, integrating quantitative and qualitative research. The study was conducted in a primary school in Changsha, Hunan Province, where four classes of 180 students (age 7 to 8 years) in the second grade and 180 of their caregivers were assigned to one of four cumulative intervention conditions: signature (signature only), activity (activity and signature), copy (activity, writing, and signature), and agent (activity, writing, signature and being agent).
The research ran for a total of 28 weeks, including the baseline period (11 weeks), the intervention period (6 weeks), and the post-intervention period (11 weeks). The quantitative data were collected by a 3 (time: baseline, intervention, post-intervention) X 4 (treatment: signature, activity, copy, agent) mixed factorial design experiment. Measures for children included commitment rate, recycling knowledge accuracy before and after the intervention, and actual recycling behavior during three periods. For caregivers, sorting knowledge accuracy, self-reported sorting and recycling behavior, and normative beliefs were collected before and after the intervention. Qualitative data were collected through telephone interviews with 8 children and 8 caregivers fourteen months later, to explore the follow-up effects of the interventions.
The results showed that all the committed children developed better knowledge and behaviors of recycling after treatments. The agent group, in which children committed to recycling and becoming agents to promote changes in the family, had a significant improvement in children's commitment rates. Children's overall recycling behavior was significantly higher in the intervention period than at baseline and post intervention. In terms of parents, after the intervention, there were significant increases in self-reported sorting and recycling behavior in all four groups, but only parents in the intergenerational group showed a significant increase in the sorting knowledge accuracy and normative beliefs. Subsequent qualitative analyses revealed that children would share with their parents how to sort their waste in real life, and remind them to take appropriate environmental actions. All parents reported they were influenced by their children. The qualitative analysis provides a different perspective on the findings.
Our study sheds new light on the influences of innovative commitment-related interventions, providing experimental evidence that commitment strategies are effective in improving children's recycling knowledge and behavior. The results strongly supported the bidirectional theory of parent-child relationships, and demonstrated the effectiveness of the combined strategy of commitment and intergenerational learning on children's and families' knowledge and behavior change. This study provides a solid foundation for future research and offers constructive and useful solutions for promoting household sorting and recycling behavior. |
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