Are Greek High School Students Environmental Citizens?

Abstract

Environmental citizenship is specifically concerned with understanding the nature of global issues and taking an active role in addressing them. The aim of the present paper is the identification of the characteristics that constitute the environmental citizen among high school students in Greece. Literature review revealed the characteristics that an environmental citizen should possess. Thus, a research was conducted via a closed-type questionnaire in order to identify those characteristics in the students' responses. The results suggest that the knowledge of the students on certain environmental issues is sufficient. Also, the major motive for participation in environmental activities is the high level of awareness of the students about the global environment. Finally, a classification of high school students in five clusters, describing the relevance of their responses to the environmental citizenship characteristics, is presented.