Educational Interventions that Improve Environmental Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis

Compared studies of the effectiveness of 18 educational interventions conducted in classrooms and in nontraditional settings in improving proenvironmental behavior. Classroom interventions (5th-8th grade, college) improved environmental behavior more effectively than interventions in nontraditional settings such as camps or adult consumer workshops. Interventions that most effectively improved environmental behavior actively involved participants and involved young participants. Active participation was more likely in interventions implemented in classrooms than in nontraditional settings. However, few of these studies measured actual behavior, and often poor research methods were used.