The Effects of media use on college students' environmental behavior: An analysis of the mediating effects of environmental risk perception and environmental knowledge

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of media use on college students' environmental protection behavior with Taiyuan Institute of Technology as a sample, and put forward suggestions for strengthening college students' environmental protection behavior and promoting their effective development of environmental protection behavior. Therefore, based on the existing literature, this study takes environmental risk perception and environmental knowledge as mediating variables to analyze their roles in media use affecting college students' environmental behavior. This study is a quantitative study, using convenient sampling, questionnaire survey, quantitative analysis and other research methods to collect the data of 391 students in Taiyuan Institute of Technology, analyze the data, and test the hypothesis. According to the existing literature, media use is divided into two dimensions: media use type and media focus on environmental information type. The research finds that media use type has a significant positive impact on college students' environmental protection behavior, and media focus on environmental information type also has a significant positive impact on environmental protection behavior. The study also found that the influence path includes direct influence path and indirect influence path, in which environmental risk perception plays an intermediary role between the type of media use and environmental protection behavior, and also plays an intermediary role between the media focus on environmental information type and environmental protection behavior. Environmental knowledge plays a mediating role between the media use type and environmental protection behavior, as well as between media focus on environmental information type and environmental protection behavior. Media use has a very complex impact on college students' environmental protection behavior, and there is a staggered relationship between media use and college students' environmental risk perception and environmental knowledge. In general, media optimization can help improve college students' environmental risk perception, help them effectively cope with and manage environmental risks, accumulate environmental knowledge, and strengthen their environmental behavior intention.