Using Species Knowledge to Promote Pro-Environmental Attitudes? The Association among Species Knowledge, Environmental System Knowledge and Attitude towards the Environment in Secondary School Students

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The Earth’s biodiversity is currently declining rapidly. To counteract this loss, it is important to create awareness of nature and the environment in society. According to scientists and conservationists, the basis of such awareness is knowledge of animal and plant species. This study investigated the level of species knowledge of students and the relationship between species knowledge and environmental knowledge as well as attitudes towards the environment. The study concludes that students know more vertebrate species than invertebrate species and that high species knowledge has a positive effect on environmental knowledge and attitude towards the environment. Promoting species knowledge is therefore one way to create more awareness about biodiversity. ABSTRACT: Scientists and conservationists suggest species knowledge as a possible starting point when it comes to creating deeper knowledge and awareness of nature, the environment, and biodiversity. The aim of this work was to analyze secondary school students’ species knowledge of vertebrates and invertebrates. This is one of the first studies that also draws on invertebrates. Furthermore, we investigated whether knowledge of species forms a basis for the formation of environmental knowledge and attitude towards the environment. For this purpose, a questionnaire on species knowledge was developed. In addition, a questionnaire was used to measure environmental system knowledge, and the 2-MEV Attitude Scale to measure attitude towards the environment. The questionnaires were completed by 103 seventh and eighth-grade (age: 12–13) students of a secondary German school (Gymnasium, highest stratification level). The students identified more vertebrates than invertebrates (50.15% vs. 36.7%). The structural equation model with the latent variables species knowledge, environmental system knowledge, and attitude towards the environment showed that species knowledge has a highly significant influence on the two other latent variables. More precisely species knowledge explained 28% of the variance in environmental systems knowledge and 17% of the variance in attitude towards the environment. This study can therefore draw attention to the relevance of teaching species knowledge in the sense of Education for Sustainable Development, in order not to promote decreasing biodiversity through dwindling species knowledge.