A Survey on Elementary Students' Perceptions about Global and Local Environmental Issues

초등학생의 전지구적 및 지역적 환경 문제에 대한 인식 조사

The purpose of this study was to survey primary students' perception of the global and local environmental issues. The subjects were 853 fifth primary students in Seoul, Busan, Daejeon, Anyang, Gimpo and Cheongju. The results were as follows: First, the perception level of the global environmental issues were global warming (M=3.99), drinking-water pollution (M=3.92), acid rain (M=3.77), yellow dust (M=3.66), ozone depletion (M=3.57), deforestation in tropical areas (M=3.52), desertification (M=3.36), biodiversity (M=3.40) and their perception level of local environmental issues were waste disposal (M=3.87), air pollution (M=3.74), bad smell (M=3.70), noise (M=3.61), river pollution (M=3.57), soil pollution (M=3.44). Second, it was shown that the metropolitan students' perception levels of environmental issues were higher than the non-metropolitan students'. There wasn't a significant difference in the perception levels of two scale environmental issues and characteristics for sex (p>.05). Third, the result of analyzing on the effects between characteristics was that the factors like 'environmental interest' and 'impact on personal life' had a strong influence on the 'behavior will' to solve the global environmental issues, and 'environmental interest' and 'personal knowledge' had a strong influence on the 'behavior will' to solve the local environmental issues. Fourth, the result of analyzing on the characteristics according to the types of the environmental issues showed that 'personal knowledge', 'environmental interest' and 'behavior will' were high in the global environmental issues (p<.01) and 'virtual contamination', 'human responsibility' and 'impact on personal life' were high in the local environmental issues (p<.05).