From Knowledge to Action? Exploring the Relationships Between Environmental Experiences, Learning, and Behavior

On the basis of qualitative research and two surveys with 786 and 1004 Swiss respondents, this article presents a new “life-world” approach to exploring the complex relationships between environmental experience, learning, and behavior. Contrary to traditional views, the author shows that environmental information, knowledge, and awareness predict little of the variability in most forms of environmental behavior. (The primary behaviors that information and knowledge acquisition appear to foster are protest actions). Rather than fostering behavior, environmental learning is more often used as a means to cope with environmental fear and anxiety. Consistent with the life-world approach, the main factors predicting environmental behavior, or absence thereof, are experiences in and with the environment (e.g., previous environmental activism, experiences with nature, and exposure to environmental catastrophes).