Overcoming Barriers: Tailoring Climate Education for Latino and Non-Latino Citizens to Impact Decision Making

• In Event: Interdisciplinary and Critical Conceptualizations of Climate Change Education and Research

Abstract

Culture has been shown to be an important determinant of Latino/Hispanic American environmental attitudes (Schultz, Unipan, & Gamba, 2000), which might help to explain underrepresentation of Latinos in the U.S. “environmental” movement led by organizations such as Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, but activism in Environmental Justice mobilizations. With shifting U.S. demographics, however, there is increased urgency to understand how all racial groups can work together for the common good. As part of the Climate Education Partners (CEP) work in San Diego, we investigated how to address this ethnic group disparity. In this paper, we describe a study of how climate change science knowledge relates to Latino and Non-Latino citizen (a) engagement in conservation behaviors and (b) more informed decision-making. Drawing upon previous work on the Tripartite Integration Model of Social Influence (TIMSI) (Estrada et al., 2011, 2017), we hypothesized that climate change knowledge that promotes efficacy (i.e., a sense that one can do something) would relate to greater engagement in conservation behaviors and more informed decision-making (both common of community members concerned about climate change).
To test this model, 1001 San Diego residence participated in a telephone survey in which the attitudes towards climate change were assessed using “6 Americas” segmentation (Chryst et al., 2018), in addition to climate change science knowledge, efficacy, values, and engagement in weekly and yearly climate change friendly behaviors (e.g., conservation, transportation, community engagement behaviors). Results showed that there were significant differences in the 6 America segmentation distributions, knowledge, efficacy and behavioral engagement with Latinos significantly more concerned than Non-Latinos, and reporting greater knowledge, efficacy and engagement in behaviors. However, data from both groups showed support for the TIMSI theoretical framework, such that efficacy mediated the relationship between climate change knowledge and behavior. Thus, for both groups, climate change science knowledge was more likely to result in behavioral engagement when the science knowledge was accompanied with the belief that one has the ability to engage in behaviors that mitigate or adapt to climate change (i.e., efficacy).
Implications for how to improve both Latino and Non-Latino climate change education that results in informed decision-making and greater integration into the community concerned about climate change will be discussed. Specifically, I will discuss issues regarding how historically, environmental spaces have centered on the experience of culturally white Americans and how re-centering the spaces to include diverse cultural experiences and values may improve engagement and movement in this area.

Author

• Mica Estrada, University of California - San Francisco