Bio-energy and youth: Analyzing the role of school, home, and media from the future policy perspectives

Applied Energy 88 (2011) 1233–1240

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Bio-energy and youth: Analyzing the role of school, home, and media from the future policy perspectives Pradipta Halder a,⇑, Sari Havu-Nuutinen b, Janne Pietarinen c, Paavo Pelkonen a a

School of Forest Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland c School of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 18 May 2010 Received in revised form 29 September 2010 Accepted 10 October 2010 Available online 12 November 2010 Keywords: Bio-energy Youth School Home Media Policy

a b s t r a c t The study investigated the relationships between students’ perceived information on bio-energy from school, home and media and their perceptions, attitudes, and knowledge regarding bio-energy. The study also analyzed the scope of future policies to raise awareness among young students about bio-energy. Data drawn from 495 Finnish students studying in ninth grade revealed that the students were more positive in their attitudes towards bio-energy compared to their perceptions of it. They were very positive about learning about bio-energy, while not so eager towards its utilization. It appeared that school, home, and media all had statistically significant effects on students’ perceptions, attitudes, and level of knowledge related to bio-energy. Three principal components emerged from students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy viz. ‘motivation’ revealing students’ eagerness to know more about bioenergy; ‘considering sustainability’ revealing their criticality of forest bio-energy; and ‘utilization’ revealing their state of interests to use bio-energy. Bio-energy policies to be effective must consider the role of school, home, and media as important means to engage young students in bio-energy related discussions. It is also desirable to establish interactions between energy and educational policies to integrate the modern renewable energy concepts in the school curriculum. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Finland is one of the leading European countries in terms of bioenergy production and utilization from forest biomass [1], and bioenergy contributes 80% of the total renewable energies (REs) produced in Finland [2]. North Karelia in eastern Finland is a European leader in using bio-energy from forest biomass that accounts for almost 70% of all fuels used for heating and electricity generation in this region [3]. However, a previous study [4] on young citizens’ (ninth grade students) knowledge and perceptions of bio-energy in North Karelia shows that only a small percentage of the students are actually able to demonstrate a high level of bio-energy knowledge; whereas students with such high level of knowledge tend to be more critical of bio-energy. In general, students’ knowledge of bio-energy appears to be lower in comparison to other REs (e.g. solar, wind, and hydro). The same study also reveals that urban students are more positive in their perceptions of bio-energy than their rural counterparts, whereas there is no such gender difference in their perceptions of bio-energy. A significant number of studies have discussed young students’ perceptions and attitudes ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +358 13 251 3629. E-mail address: pradipta.halder@uef.fi (P. Halder). 0306-2619/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2010.10.017

toward various environmental issues and objects. However, not many of them have focused on young citizens such as students and their perceptions and attitudes related to REs and especially bio-energy. In fact, there has been little effort to evaluate energy technologies from social perspectives, which is one of the three pillars of sustainability [5]. Modern bio-energy system is a new and challenging topic including several socio-economic and environmental dimensions, demands special consideration from the field of energy education for young people [4]. The present study aims to provide new scientific information on young citizens’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy and find out the role of school, home and media on their knowledge, perceptions and attitudes (KPA) towards bio-energy. It is believed that students’ perceptions and attitudes are crucial components of learning and they have a causal relationship between them [6]. Perceptions without link to scientific reasoning are often details, based on everyday experiences. Pupils’ perceptions should be analysed within the contexts they describe them. Perceptions describe more the initial thoughts of the phenomena than conceptions, which focus more on explanations, attitudes and knowledge [6]. Yin [7] argues that people’s perception and awareness, feelings or emotional response, and judgments or opinions about environmental problems refer to the cognitive, affective

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and evaluative environmental orientations, respectively. Unlike perceptions, attitudes are collections of beliefs and often linked to emotional reactions and willingness to do something [6]. Environmental attitudes are a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating the natural environment with some degree of favor or disfavor [8]. By ‘evaluating’ they refer to all classes of evaluative responding such as cognitive, affective’ and behavioral [9]. In the definition given by Yin [7], ‘‘environmental attitudes are people’s orientations towards environmentally related objects, including environmental problems themselves and problem solving actions”. Attitudes are a latent construct and as such cannot be observed directly, thus rather be measured directly, attitudes have to be inferred from overt responses [10]. Public attitudes are crucial in the choice of energy futures [11]. In respect of bio-energy, we are interested to capture young citizens’ perceptions and attitudes for finding the ways to promote their understanding and use of bio-energy in the future. Energy consumption has increased considerably among the youth as they are using more and more energy intensive devices in their daily lives for various purposes [12]. Eurobarometer survey [13] revealed a favorable attitude among young people (15– 24 years old) in Europe towards REs, especially solar and wind energies; and a considerable number of them also showed their willingness to pay more for energy produced from renewable sources. However, BERR [14] study revealed young citizens’ (16– 24 years old) ambiguity over many issues related to REs in the UK. In Europe, previous studies revealed poor public awareness and support for bio-energy; whereas citizens were more knowledgeable about solar and wind energies [15–17]. Similarly, the Eurobarometer [18] survey revealed that 80% of the respondents favored solar energy, followed by wind energy (71%), and biomass-based energy (55%). One possible reason for such low level of awareness and favor in respect of bio-energy is that people seem to be locked into established technology in the country context and with new technologies such as modern bio-energy systems, they become apprehensive [19]. However, this is not always true as it was found in the case of the Finnish students’ knowledge, perceptions and preferences towards bio-energy [4]. Previous studies although reveal many challenging information for policy makers and educators, there is a general lack of discussions on how to engage young people in energy related discussions such as bio-energy and encourage them to use it, wherever possible. The role of school, home and media in diffusing bio-energy related information among young students has not also been discussed in details in the earlier studies. It has been found that although increased awareness and knowledge are important, they have limited influence upon attitudes and behaviors of public [20]. A significant relationship among knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes exists [21]. However, there are also conflicting findings on whether an increasing understanding of a new technology can actually result in a change of students’ perceptions and attitudes about the use of that technology [22]. This is because of the complexities of attitudes, behaviors and the relationship between the two [11]. Kaiser et al. [9] have also recognized the ‘attitude-behavior gap’, where they postulate that this ‘attitude-behavior gap’ seriously compromises any ambition to identify a person’s attitude by means of behavior inspection. Increasing energy awareness among students can transform themselves into sustainable energy-friendly consumers and citizens when they grow up [23]. For example, students in Japan were found to be more energy conscious when their schools installed photovoltaic systems [5]. In the context of bio-energy, schools as a medium of learning and students as future decision makers are thought to be important multipliers. The role of school as a formal source of information and education is very important to expand

this multiplier effect amongst students in modern societies. When teachers are knowledgeable and have interests towards REs, only then the necessary knowledge and values they can properly incorporate into the learning process by providing students with appropriate capabilities to deal with this important issue in their everyday lives [24]. It is not only teachers who influence students’ learning and attitudes towards science, parents also play an important role in a child’s education as a medium of informal learning [25]. Parental attitudes, educational aspirations, and socio-economic status are all part of a student’s home environment; and it can be seen as an agency that aids in the construction of students’ attitudes [26]. Along with schools and parents, the role of media is crucial to informing society about all aspects of our lives, including developments in science [27]. Media influences on widening public awareness of various environmental issues [28–29]; and there are examples that media have cultivated public perceptions and attitudes towards a new technological object. Media does not only reinforce and activate existing opinions, but also create new opinions and extensive media diffusion will affect public opinions regardless of the content of media message and the content of the individual’s existing opinions [7]. The influential role of media on public perceptions and attitudes has also been acknowledged by Fan [30] by suggesting that media not only are successful in giving people topics to think about, but also telling people what to think. In the last few years, there have been extensive publications on bio-energy in the print as well as in the electronic media. For instance, the role of bio-energy (especially bio-fuels) has been criticized for the global food price rise and biodiversity loss in the tropical countries [31–33]. It has been found that media are most influential in shaping public attitudes toward problems that are out of reach and out of sight with which the mass public does not have regular direct or meaningful contact [7]. Media does not only influence people’s cognitive environmental orientations, but their affective and evaluative orientations as well [7,34]. Based on the above discussions, the study aims to find out the students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy, the dimensions of these phenomena, and the apparent complex relationships between perceptions and attitudes related to bio-energy. With this, the study will explore the effects of school, home, and media on the students’ KPA towards bio-energy in North Karelia, Finland. Finally, the study will recommend broader policy scopes on engaging young people in bio-energy related discussions for raising their awareness and changes in their attitudes. For this study, the media refers to all possible mediums such as newspapers, magazines, internet, TV and others.

2. Methods and data 2.1. Study design This study extends a previous empirical research [4] that measured ninth grade Finnish students’ knowledge and perceptions of bio-energy in North Karelia, Finland. The present study includes additional items from the same survey instrument on students’ attitudes towards bio-energy, school, home, and media. Splitting the data into two parts increases the possibilities to consider the issues more profoundly and to find relations among the data. In addition, the two contexts – one which relates students’ knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes (i.e. their broader psychological dimensions); and the other relating to particular social environments such as school, home, and media in the context of bio-energy are distinct from each other and demand special attentions from the researchers and practitioners in the field of bio-energy.

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The survey instrument consisted of a self-constructed five point Likert-type scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) and openended questions to measure the multidimensional contexts of students’ KPA towards bio-energy. The study design followed previous research [21,35–40] on young students’ KPA towards various environmental themes, where the researchers employed five point Likert-type scales. Some of the knowledge related items were further categorized into ‘low’, ‘medium’, and ‘high’ levels, to measure students’ level of bio-energy knowledge (see Appendixes A and B for details). Altogether, there were 18 items on the Likert-type bio-energy perceptions and attitudes scale (see Table 1). The Cronbach’s alpha (reliability coefficient) of the 18 items on the scale was 0.83, which showed a higher level of internal consistency of the scale. A reliability coefficient of 0.70 and above is considered acceptable and desirable for consistency levels [21,40,41–42]. The items on the Likert-type scale were divided into two subscales: ‘‘students’ perceptions of bio-energy” (11 items, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.74); and ‘‘students attitudes towards bio-energy” (7 items, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.85). The complete questionnaire is available from the corresponding author on request.

2.2. Data collection The questionnaires were distributed to 628 ninth grade students in eight schools in North Karelia, situated in urban and rural areas. Of which 495 students responded and this corresponded to 79% of the total ninth grade students in those eight schools. The mean age of the students was 15 years (SD = 0.451). The majority of the students (75%) participated from urban areas while 25% were from rural areas. 49% were girls and 51% were boys. The survey questionnaires sent to the students were in the Finnish language and two experts in the field of biomass and bio-energy translated them back into English language for the analysis. Quantitative analysis was performed in the SPSS 17.0 programme. Simple descriptive statistics such as cross tabs and percentages analyzed the dispersion of students’ attitudes and perceptions. The statistical tests such as Mann Whitney U test, Principal Component Analysis with Varimax, and Chi-square analyzed relations

between KPA of the students towards bio-energy and the social environments.

3. Results 3.1. Students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics summarizing the responses to the 18 statement items related to the students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy. Items 1–11 indicate students’ perceptions while Items 12–18 denote students’ attitudes towards bio-energy. Results clearly showed a critical perception amongst the students as they disagreed to most of the perceptions related items. In addition, a significant chunk of the students was not sure about whether to agree or disagree and they preferred to indicate ‘do not know’ on the perceptions related items. In general, boys were more positive in their perceptions of bio-energy than girls were; whereas the urban students showed more positive perceptions of bio-energy than their rural counterparts did. The respondents demonstrated greater positive attitudes towards bio-energy than their perceptions of it; although a third of the students remained undecided (DKn). They were very positive about knowing more on bio-energy by visiting a bio-energy plant in North Karelia (Item 13); studying more on bio-energy (Item 14); and discussing with teachers, parents and classmates (Item 15–17). However, their responses were mostly negative in the context of future use of bio-energy such as driving a car that runs on bio-fuel (Item 12); and using bio-energy at homes (Item 18). The effect of gender was statistically significant on students’ overall attitudes towards bio-energy (Mann Whitney U test, z = 3.867, p = .000); while the effect of living area was statistically insignificant. In general, the boys and urban students were more positive in their attitudes towards bio-energy than the girls and rural students. A Principal Component Analysis combining the perceptions and attitudes related items revealed three principal components indicating three distinct dimensions related to bio-energy amongst

Table 1 Students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy with gender and living area factors (descriptive statistics). Items

Total Acceptance (%)

Students’ perceptions 1. Increased use of bio-energy can mitigate the global warming problems (n = 492) 2. Bio-energy can replace the use of fossil fuels in the future (n = 489) 3. Increasing bio-energy production will decrease food production (n = 480)a 4. Wood energy will be a major source of bio-energy in the future (n = 488) 5. Production of energy from wood is environmentally friendly (n = 492) 6. Cutting trees for energy production is justified (n = 490) 7. Production of bio-energy from forests is sustainable in Finland (n = 489) 8. Production of bio-energy from forests is globally sustainable (n = 487) 9. Tree plantations should be established for bio-energy production (n = 491) 10. There is growing awareness of bio-energy in society (n = 492) 11. Politicians should support the research and development of bio-energy in society (n = 491)

8 (71) 11 (58) 20 (18) 12 (53) 32 (43) 40 (32) 25 (36) 36 (23) 16 (49) 24 (35) 8 (55)

Students’ attitudes 12. I would like to 13. I would like to 14. I would like to 15. I would like to 16. I would like to 17. I would like to 18. I would like to

16 (57) 37 (23) 34 (30) 42 (22) 45 (16) 51(12) 12 (53)

drive a car in the future that runs on bio-fuel (n = 489) visit a bio-energy plant in my region (n = 488) study more about bio-energy in the future (n = 488) discuss more about bio-energy with my teachers (n = 488) discuss more about bio-energy with my parents (n = 486) discuss more about bio-energy with my classmates (n = 489) use bio-energy at home in the future (n = 489)

DKn (%)

Total acceptance by gender and living area (%) Girls

Boys

Urban

Rural

21 30 62 34 25 28 40 42 34 41 38

2 3 8 4 14 23 11 17 7 14 2

6 8 12 8 18 17 14 19 9 10 6

6 8 15 9 26 34 20 30 13 18 6

2 3 5 3 6 6 5 6 3 6 2

27 39 36 36 20 37 35

4 16 14 17 25 23 2

12 21 20 25 20 28 10

10 28 25 31 34 39 8

6 9 9 11 11 12 4

Notes: Total acceptance = strongly agree plus agree; DKn = do not know; percentages in bold and within parentheses show total rejection (strongly disagree plus disagree); n = number of responses to each item; all percentages have been rounded off. Item being reverse scored for reliability analysis.

a

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Table 2 Principal components of students’ perceptions and attitudes related to bio-energya,b,c,d. Items

Motivation

16. I would like to discuss more about bio-energy with my parents 15. I would like to discuss more about bio-energy with my teachers 17. I would like to discuss more about bio-energy with my classmates 14. I would like to study more about bio-energy in the future 13. I would like to visit a bio-energy plant in my region 7. Production of bio-energy from forests is sustainable in Finland 6. Cutting trees for energy production is justified 5. Production of energy from wood is environmentally friendly 8. Production of bio-energy from forests is globally sustainable 12. I would like to drive a car in the future that runs on bio-fuels (such as ethanol) 18. I would like to use bio-energy at home in the future 2. Bio-energy can replace the use of fossil fuels in the future a b c d

Considering sustainability

.880 .860 .846 .810 .716 .082 .026 .095 .028 .124 .252 .146

Utilization

.025 .001 .056 .062 .091 .788 .767 .738 .724 .031 .002 .150

.106 .173 .024 .239 .230 .091 .043 .166 .003 .830 .782 .740

Rotated components using varimax. Rotation converged in four iterations. Kaiser–Myer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy = 0.823. Bartlett’s test of sphericity 6 0.00; loading on dimensions above .50 are highlighted.

the students in this study (Table 2). There was a ‘motivation’ dimension amongst the students (Item 13–17; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.89) which might be interpreted as students’ eagerness to obtain more knowledge about bio-energy. A ‘considering sustainability’ dimension (Item 5–8; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.76) which indicated students’ views on the proclaimed sustainability issues embedded in the forest based energy production system. Finally, a ‘utilization’ dimension (Item 2, 12, and 18; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.74) showed students’ interests related to using bio-energy in their daily lives. The three components explained 65% of the total variations in students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy in our study. The three principal components appeared to be distinct from each other since the correlations between them were very weak (Pearson Correlation Coefficient ranged from 0. 10 to 0.39).

3.2. Information obtained on bio-energy from schools, homes, and media as perceived by the students Students were asked to inform whether they had opportunities to discuss bio-energy in their schools (e.g. with teachers and classmates); with their parents at homes; and find discussions on bioenergy on the media (Table 3). There was no further categorization of media in our study and it included all types of media (e.g. newspaper, magazines, T.V., internet, radio and others). It appeared that between the students and parents the discussions on bio-energy took place only on few occasions as compared to their discussions in schools and finding information from media. Although half of the students reported that they did not have any discussions on bio-energy in schools, 85% of the students reported the same for home. There were apparent and large differences (not statistically significant though) amongst the urban and rural students in their perceived information sources on bio-energy.

In the open-ended question related to discussions in schools as provided by the students were as such: Bio-energy is a renewable source of energy, it can help in mitigating the climate change, and global warming related problems; adverse impacts of bio-fuels on agricultural crop production. Examples of home discussions as provided by the students in another open-ended question were as follows: Cutting trees for firewood in the fireplace; using wood pellets in the heating oven; increasing price of wood pellets; and the future of biodiesel cars in Finland. Similarly, the examples of media information on bio-energy as provided by the students were: Increasing use of bio-energy in the Finnish society; role of bioenergy in climate change mitigation; bio-fuels and their impacts on agricultural crop production; and the future of biodiesel cars in Finland. Students were also asked whether they could see any future possibility of learning bio-energy in their schools. About 486 students responded and 60% of them answered in the negative, as they did not see any future possibility of learning a new topic like bio-energy in their schools. However, those who could see such possibility (39%) were able to give examples of the following types: Introducing a bio-energy module in the course curriculum; showing video films about bio-energy in school; and visiting a wood pellet factory in their region. Both the effects of gender (Mann Whitney U test, z = 5.903, p < .01) and living area (Mann Whitney U test, z = 2.843, p = <.01) were statistically significant. Girls and the urban students were more positive about the future learning possibility on bio-energy in schools than the boys and the rural students. About 45% of the students selected media followed by 37% selected school and only 3% selected home as the source of bio-energy related information they came across. Ranking of the sources of information on bioenergy was significantly affected by living area (Chi-square = 23.03,

Table 3 Information obtained on bio-energy in schools, at homes and in media as perceived by the students (descriptive statistics). Items

Have you discussed bio-energy in your school? (n = 486) Have you discussed bio-energy with your parents at home? (n = 490) Have you found information on bio-energy in media? (n = 332)

Students’ responses (%)

Categorization by gender and living area within the total responses for ‘Yes’ (%)

Yes

Girls

Boys

Urban

Rural

46(54) 15(85) 69(31)

23(26) 8(41) 34(15)

23(28) 7(44) 35(16)

34(40) 10(64) 51(15)

12(14) 5(21) 18(16)

Notes: n = number of responses to each questions; all percentages have been rounded off; percentages in bold and within parentheses denote students’ responses as ‘no’.

P. Halder et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 1233–1240 Table 4 Relationships between different sources of bio-energy and students’ KPA towards bioenergy. Sources of information on bioenergy

Perceptions of bio-energy (Mann Whitney U test)

Attitudes towards bio-energy (Mann Whitney U test)

Level of knowledge of bio-energy (Mann Whitney U test)

School

z = 3.015, p = .003** z = 6.408, p = .000** z = 2.965, p = .003**

z = 3.758, p = .000** z = 3.854 p = .000** z = 3.860, p = .000**

z = 3.470, p = .001** z = 5.248, p = .001** z = 4.246, p = .000**

Home Media

**

p < .01.

df = 4, p < .05), while the effect of gender was insignificant. More urban students selected media than the rural students, whereas an equal percentage of them (38%) selected school. 3.3. Effects of school, home, and media on students’ KPA related to bioenergy School, home, and media as sources of information on bio-energy were ‘recoded’ into three new variables comprising of two new groups from each variable: ‘yes’ (students whose responses were positive) and ‘no’ (students with negative responses). Similarly, the score from the students’ level of knowledge of bio-energy was reclassified as ‘advanced’ (combining the ‘high’ level of knowledge) and ‘moderate’ (combining ‘low’ and ‘medium’ levels of knowledge) categories (see Appendixes A and B for the classification of knowledge level items and students’ responses to them). In all the cases, the effects of school, home, and media were statistically significant on students’ KPA related to bio-energy (Table 4). Results revealed that students who received information on bioenergy from school, home, and media were more critical in their perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy compared to the relatively less informed students. Similarly, information received on bio-energy from these sources also increased their level of bio-energy knowledge. In further analysis, we wanted to find out the link between students’ level of knowledge of bio-energy (‘advanced’ and ‘moderate’) and the three principal components (viz. ‘motivation’, ‘considering sustainability’, and ‘utilization’). It appeared that the students with an ‘advanced’ level of knowledge of bio-energy were less eager to obtain more knowledge on the topic compared to the students with ‘moderate’ level of knowledge of bio-energy (Mann Whitney U test, z = 2.780, p < .01). There was no such statistically significant difference in students’ level of knowledge of bio-energy and ‘considering sustainability’ issues in the bio-energy production system from forests. However, it appeared that students with an ‘advanced’ level of bio-energy knowledge were less interested to use it in their daily lives compared to the students with ‘moderate’ level of bio-energy knowledge (Mann Whitney U test, z = 2.232, p < .05). 4. Discussions On one hand, the study has investigated the North Karelian students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy; and on the other hand has attempted to find out the effects of school, home, and media on those students’ KPA related to bio-energy. Exploring these issues was highly relevant since we did not have this sort of data from Finland and not from other countries. Bio-energy and other REs will play an important role to address our future energy needs and it is necessary that schools integrate these concepts with

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practical orientations in their regular course curriculum. However, the results from our study showed the challenges to promote REs and especially bio-energy to the younger generations. In general, the students in our study showed greater positive attitudes towards bio-energy than their perceptions of it. Their perceptions of bio-energy referred to their general awareness and beliefs about bio-energy; whereas their attitudes reflected their future actions related to bio-energy based on their prior knowledge and perceptions on the topic. The items related to attitudes in this study measured their future actions, which were more of personal in nature. On one hand, they were very positive towards learning more on bio-energy, however less enthusiastic towards utilizing bio-energy in their daily lives. The much-emphasized gap between attitudes and behavior of individuals in environmental matters is also apparent in our study in the case of bio-energy. This is due to that attitudes and behaviors are often regarded as a paradox that apparently pro-environmental attitudes are not reflected in significant shifts in behavior; or that attitudes held by individuals are apparently inconsistent [11]. It appeared that the boys and urban students were more positive in their attitudes towards bio-energy than their counterparts were. Nevertheless, almost one-third of the students were ambivalent in their attitudes towards bio-energy. It seems that young people need more positive experiences and relevant knowledge to be able to change the direction of their perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy. Information from school, home, and media as perceived by the students appeared to have statistically significant effects on their perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy. It seems that when students have more information on bio-energy from the sources they tend to be more critical of bio-energy. This kind of phenomenon possibly stems from the fact that bio-energy as a context is itself complex and there are different views on it. Media coverage on bio-energy (especially on the bio-fuels) could have also contributed to students’ such perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy in our study. However, school, home, and media appeared to have statistically significant positive contributions on students’ knowledge level of bio-energy. Media and schools appeared to be the most popular information sources on bio-energy to the students; whereas they did not consider home environment as such important means of providing bio-energy information. This is despite the fact that the use of bio-energy is very common in North Karelia, Finland in indoor heating and sauna, and students quite often use firewood in campfire and other outdoor activities. It is possible that the students do not perceive that firewood in camps is a source of bio-energy. It may also be a fact that they do not differentiate modern uses of bio-energy from the traditional and old-fashioned wood burning. In addition, sauna may be more related to leisure time activities which do not have strong connection to everyday life, where burning of wood for energy is important for survival, especially during the winter times in Finland. These issues are more related to their consciousness of bio-energy and its use. The students use it in their everyday life but do not consider it as a bio-energy. However, based on this study we cannot say that home is not important in the case of bio-energy; it is possible that most of the students in this study failed to conceptualize home as a medium of providing information on bio-energy. Therefore, parents can discuss more about bio-energy experiences at homes with their children and teachers could again explain them in schools with more examples. School and media have important roles to provide general information on bio-energy and linking them to everyday life. A large number of the students were unsure while expressing their opinions on bio-energy which indicated a rather ‘state of ambivalence’ amongst the young students. They demonstrated positive learning attitudes towards bio-energy; however, they were not so optimistic about the future possibilities of learning the

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subject in their schools. Our results also showed a lack of interest amongst the young students to use bio-energy in their daily lives. This particular type of phenomenon clearly shows that positive attitude towards REs such as bio-energy does not necessarily lead to behavioral change towards them. Attitudes indicate intentions to behave in a certain way, but are not behavior as such, as one cannot directly observe them [1]. Three principal components were found amongst the students related to their perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy (viz. motivation, considering sustainability, and utilization). Students with higher level of bio-energy knowledge were less eager to obtain more knowledge on the topic; more critical on the sustainability issues related to bio-energy; and less enthusiastic about using bio-energy in their everyday life. The reasons for that are difficult to illustrate based on this study alone. However, it may be that these students think they are knowledgeable and the bio-energy sector finds it challenging to argue the sustainability ideology embedded in the forest based energy production systems. Only a minority of the students was able to see the growing awareness of bio-energy in societies and supported the role of policy makers to promote research and development in this field. This aspect is especially important from energy policy point of view. Future bio-energy policies should consider young people as important stakeholders and encourage them in using renewable and clean energy sources such as bio-energy. It is true that raising young generation’s awareness on these matters promises and secures the existence of the responsible energy consumers in the future [23]. This is, however, challenging since public seems to be comparatively more aware of solar and wind energies than bio-energy although many people in their daily lives use that energy source. This indicates a typical perception problem that since people already use bio-energy in their daily lives they do not perceive it as a modern source of REs. It further denotes that even if they are aware of bio-energy, however they fail to perceive bio-energy as a modern solution to REs. Schools and parents can play an important role to overcome the challenge of engaging the younger generation in energy related discussions. Household communication can play a role in conveying knowledge about energy and environmental issues among family members especially to the pupils [5]. However, to do that parent and other senior members of the family should first themselves be aware of the emerging energy technologies such as modern bio-energy systems. The present study opens up further avenues to study the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes of parents regarding bio-energy since they usually take the decisions at homes in the choice of energy technologies. Along with them, governments should be encouraging debates about all REs and an informed discussion on the most suitable use of RE in a particular context, with a considered debate about the specific sustainability implications. Energy educational policies should target children since they are more receptive to new concepts and can act as educational agents and opinion leaders at home while growing up as environmental conscious citizens [43,44]. There are examples, where various environmental awareness building campaigns used media quite extensively [28,45–47]. Media campaigns are among the policy tools most commonly used to attempt to influence public opinion of particular issues [28]. Substitution of biomass for fossil fuels in energy consumption is a measure to mitigate global warming and in this context, forest biomass for energy is being in agreement with the principles for sustainable development [48]. However, in our study, students hold strong negative perceptions of bio-energy in its role in global warming mitigation and they do not seem to posses sufficient knowledge regarding sustainability issues in forest biomass for energy production. Therefore, it is extremely important that media, schools, and parents pay attention in generating awareness among

the younger generations of our society about the important role of bio-energy in global warming mitigation and contribution of forest biomass as an energy source for sustainable development. Especially there seems to be need for more information and experiences related to bio-energy, which link with young people’s daily activities. However, government actions in raising awareness among young students about an emerging energy technology such as bio-energy entirely based on the ‘information deficit model’ may not dramatically influence students’ perceptions, attitudes and behavior towards bio-energy [49]. It can certainly increase their knowledge on the topic; however to change attitudes and behaviors broader social and cultural factors should be taken into consideration [11]. One point of departure in this regard is to have increasing interactions between energy and educational policies to reflect the scientific truths about bio-energy in the school curriculum. However, it will not be enough if there are no such campaigns with students to increase their energy awareness. In this regard, the mechanism proposed by Hondo and Baba [5] to increase environmental awareness and behaviour among individuals also holds importance for our study. For example, students’ awareness of bio-energy could raise their concern and knowledge on the topic; whereas delivery of knowledge through household communications and other means such as school and media have the possibility to change their perceptions and attitudes towards bioenergy and at the same time increasing their knowledge. We observed some limitations in measuring a general and decontextualized topic such as perceptions and attitudes of students related to bio-energy. The assessment of attitudes toward a science subject like bio-energy may demand going beyond labels such as positive, negative or ambivalent to enable research on more complex, qualitative, and non-linear sets of relationships that may exist between different facets (e.g. economic usefulness, moral considerations, and perceptions of risks) [50]. While our study provides interesting insights, one should take caution to generalize the findings. It is important to replicate the study in other regions of Finland to come to any substantive conclusions about the Finnish students’ perceptions and attitudes related to bio-energy. Although the self-constructed instrument in our study shows a strong internal consistency, more detailed investigations are needed to capture the social contexts behind students’ such varied perceptions and attitudes towards bio-energy. 5. Conclusion In the development of bio-energy and other REs, broader societal acceptances are prerequisite for the success; and young generation is certainly important from the future policy perspective. In this study, the role of school, home and media has been studied with reference to students’ KPA towards bio-energy. Our study revealed apparent complex relationships between KPA among the students related to bio-energy. However, it is imperative to study broader societal and cultural contexts for the students’ such psychological dimensions towards bio-energy given the development of bio-energy in North Karelia, Finland. Perceptions, attitudes to environmental issues and technical objects are not static, they do change over the time and it can change quite dramatically among the young students towards bio-energy. Therefore, future bio-energy policies must understand the complexities associated with these social and psychological characteristics of citizens before framing strategies aimed at this change. Acknowledgement The Authors are thankful to the reviewers for their suggestions, which helped to improve the manuscript. The authors are also

P. Halder et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 1233–1240

thankful to Ms. Veera Tahvanainen, Dr. Aki Villa, Dr. Marjoriitta Möttönen, and Mr. Ashraful Alam for their expert comments and helping in the translation work. In addition, the authors acknowledge all the survey respondents, the schools and the municipality authorities. Finally yet importantly, the authors also acknowledge the generous funding support by the OKKA-säätiö Foundation (Helsinki, Finland). Appendix A Categorization of students’ level of bio-energy knowledge with explanations. The knowledge level in this study was adjusted after the TIMSS [51] international science benchmarks study for the eighth graders. Level of bio-energy knowledge

Explanations

Low

It demonstrates students’ knowledge of some appropriate and basic facts about bio-energy It comprises of students’ basic scientific knowledge about bio-energy and some understanding about the process of generating bio-energy It demands that students have sufficient information about bio-energy, a clear understanding of the complexities associated with bio-energy, and examples of benefits and drawbacks.

Medium

High

Appendix B Students’ responses and categorization of their level of bio-energy knowledge in general and three particular types of bio-energy forms in particular [4]. Level of knowledge

Bio-energy (M = 1.44, S.D. = 0.633, n = 288) Wood pellets (M = 1.51, S.D. = 0.666, n = 240) Billets (firewood) (M = 1.30, S.D. = 0.540, n = 369) Bio-fuels (M = 1.72, S.D. = 0.779, n = 115)

Low (%)

Medium (%)

High (%)

63

29

8

58

32

10

74

22

4

48

32

20

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