Environmental citizenship in Lebanon: a study in the higher education context

Abstract

Global and regional environmental problems persist to this day, posing serious threats to the world and Lebanon. There is a data gap regarding environmental citizenship in Lebanon, despite numerous investigations and research done in relation to environmental problems. Current Lebanese eco-citizenship behaviours should be investigated. This article aims to quantitatively investigate Lebanese higher education students’ environmental citizenship. In this study, a survey method is used with a comparative approach and factorial analyses. The sample consisted of 355 Lebanese university students from 16 Lebanese educational institutions. Results show that participants declare relatively high environmental citizenship motivations, competences, and intentions. Conversely, they report low environmental past activities. Demographic factors such as gender, age, university (private vs. public), academic year, and major yielded significant differences among the measured factors. This paper encourages establishing feedback mechanisms to gather input from students on environmental educational programmes implementing sensitization and active youth participation in environmental sustainability.

Keywords

• Environmental citizenship
• eco-citizenship
• Lebanon
• eco-citizenship factors