A Tale of Two Cities: How Can We Use Social Media to Engage Young People with an Environmentally Friendly Lifestyle in Hong Kong and Guam?

Abstract

There has recently been a growing concern about developing an environmentally friendly lifestyle (EFL) through suitable education arrangements on different media types. In this study, we propose a research model to compare the effectiveness of using traditional media and social media in promoting and engaging young people with such educational information. We collected survey data from 400 participants from Hong Kong and Guam to test the proposed model using structural equation modeling. Our findings show the effectiveness of social media in engaging young people to practice an EFL through environmental involvement and other practicing concerns, as well as through value co-creation on social media. Yet, traditional media is a more effective tool for disseminating such information to young people than social media. The relatively consistent results obtained from data collected from Hong Kong and Guam show the generalizability of the research model, showing the importance of using both traditional media and social media to engage with young people with EFL information. Our findings, therefore, provide insights for stakeholders as foundations for further research in using social media to disseminate EFL information to society.