Abstract and References
Transactions on Science and Technology Vol. 4, No. 2, 157 - 165, 2017

Students’ Interpretation and Commitment of Conservation Contents based on School Context

Elver Fazly Charlie, Fiffy Hanisdah Saikim, Muhammad Suhaimi Taat
ABSTRACT: The deteriorating of our environmental conditions is caused by human behavior. In order to fulfill the expectations of human being for comfortable lifestyles, the exploitation, destruction and exploration of the environment continued rapidly. In order to have a better future and maintain environmental sustainability, the human behavior towards conservation must be change. This research involved tertiary students’ in order to identify and explore the correlation and influence on students’ interpretation, commitment, knowledge and behavior towards a lifelong attitude of pro-conservation behavior. The sample consists of 1000 students from selected rural and urban secondary schools in Sabah, Malaysia. Questionnaire developed by the researcher is the tool used to collect the data. Pearson coefficient of correlation and path analysis via AMOS are the techniques used to analyze the data. The results via statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) revealed that there was a positive significance correlation of students’ interpretation (r= .451), students’ commitment (r= .550) and students’ nature conservation knowledge (r= .545) with pro-conservation behavior from the data collected in the rural schools of Sabah, Malaysia. From the data collected in the urban schools there was also a significance correlation of students’ interpretation (r= .317), students’ commitment (r= .488) and students’ nature conservation knowledge (r= .455) with pro-conservation behavior. The research findings revealed that the students’ interpretation, commitment, knowledge and their behavior towards conservation were important and needed more attention from various parties in order to develop their lifelong attitude towards environment and biodiversity conservation. Therefore, the environmental organizations need to be designed and organized a lot of conservation programmes in schools in order to promote conservation and build positive impact on the students’ behavior towards environment and biodiversity conservation.

KEYWORDS: Conservation; Interpretation; Commitment; Nature conservation knowledge; Pro-conservation behavior

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