Evaluation of Environmental Awareness of University Students: the Case of the University of Presov, Slovakia

Abstract

At present, all components of the environment are burdened by human activities. These human activities have caused many environmental problems, and without appropriate measures, they will have other far-reaching consequences in the future, which may be irreversible. One of the basic measures for the sustainable future of the environment and human society is to build the environmental awareness of the population. In addition to other entities, universities and their students and graduates have an important role in this process. The study focuses on the evaluation and comparison of environmental awareness and its factors among students of the University of Presov in Presov, Slovakia. Based on the results of this research, social networks and the internet are used as the main source of environmental information and should be used as a means of raising environmental awareness among students. The students of the University of Presov achieved high environmental awareness within the cognitive and emotional factors of environmental awareness, but they achieved only moderate environmental awareness within the behavioral factor. There were no significant differences in the level of environmental awareness between male and female students at the University of Presov. From the point of view of the group of study fields variable, significant differences were found in the emotional and behavioral factors of environmental awareness, with students of "Humanities" and "Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Informatics" achieving the highest scores and students of "Social, Economic and Legal Sciences" and "Healthcare" achieving the lowest scores.