Adolescents' Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: Analyzing the Opportunities and Constraints of Their Friendship Network Structure

青少年的環境意識與行動：社會影響網絡的機會與限制

張志堯(Chih-Yao Chang)

《調查研究-方法與應用》 40期 (2018/09) Pp. 167-210

摘要

In this paper, I profile the attitude, belief, and behavior of adolescents with regard to environmental issues via a nationwide survey to illustrate the extent to which our younger generation practices environmentalism. The opportunities and constraints of their friendship networks on disseminating the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) are further discussed. This discussion is based upon Simmel's sociation theory, the degree to which one's social interactions shape and reshape his/her values and actions, which results in opportunities and constraints for developing environmental education. The data collection is based on the nationwide in-school adolescent population in three age cohorts (first-year students of junior high school, high school, and college students, respectively) in 2015. The total sample size is 1,320, but the college respondens were too few to be included in the discussion here. By using social network analysis (SNA), I am able to place the following key network features of sociation: multi-dimensional friendship structures, eigenvector centrality, network constraint, network closeness, and susceptibility into the model. The findings show that adolescents had a low level of environmental engagement (only approximately five percent of our respondents displayed high environmental awareness, and even fewer had ever participated in environmental movements). Besides, the link between social and environmental engagement was of high network constraint and low eigenvector centrality, which indicates that environmental education in junior high must be highly peer-centered to spread. Moreover, popular high school students with higher levels of environmental engagement might have more influence among their peer networks, since they have stronger links to others and greater chances to help their peers become more sympathetic towards environmental problems.

關鍵字

New Ecological Paradigm ； social network analysis ； friendship ； network features ； social influence

並列摘要

在本研究中，我以臺灣地區青少年抽樣調查的資料，剖析青少年對於環境議題的了解與參與環境保護運動的程度，並探討友誼網絡與新生態典範主義之間的關係。社會網絡的觀點乃是基於Georg Simmel的sociation理論，探討友誼網絡特性對青少年養成環境保護認知的影響。資料蒐集的方式是利用一項臺灣青少年生活現況調查計畫，於2015年抽樣調查當時國一新生、高一新生以及大學－新生共1,320名的資料，進行臺灣青少年環境意識與友誼網絡分析，但由於大學－新生樣本數不足，故在分析上，僅以國高中生的結果進行討論。友誼網絡分析部分，我著重於探討多重友誼關係以及中心性、連結限制性、臨近性和易感性等結構特徵。研究發現臺灣青少年普遍環境意識皆不高並缺乏環保行動力。國中生友誼網絡是扁平，訊息傳遞或資訊分享有較高的效率，故環境意識培養應以其內部社群影響力推動較適當。高中生則是有較高環境意識的一群人在同儕之間扮演功能性的友誼角色，有助於向同儕推廣環境教育的知識與實踐。

並列關鍵字

新生態典範 ； 網絡分析 ； 友誼關係 ； 網絡特徵 ； 社會影響

參考文獻

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