Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (ICoSaPS 2024)

<Previous Article In Volume
Next Article In Volume>

Sustainability Literacy and Sustainable Outcomes Questioning the Utility of a Contested Concept

Authors
Colin Kuehl1, *
1Department of Political Science, Institute for the Study of the Environment Sustainability, and Energy Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA
*Corresponding author. Email: ckuehl@niu.edu
Corresponding Author
Colin Kuehl
Available Online 4 March 2025.
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-368-9_21How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Sustainability Literacy; Education for Sustainable Development; Environmental Behavior
Abstract

Improving the global population’s sustainability literacy is a core component of international sustainable development efforts. It is widely assumed that as individuals increase their understanding of how sustainability works, and what it is, they will make more sustainable decisions. However, upon further consideration, sustainability literacy as an approach to approach to sustainable development has two major drawbacks. First, the concept of sustainability literacy is inevitably vague and all-encompassing. In a theoretical sense, this leads to issues with definition and measurement. Empirically, this has been shown to have led to incoherent measures of the concept and calls into question sustainability literacy as a useful domain of knowledge. Second, sustainability literacy implies that increases in knowledge lead to changes in behavior. However, work across a number of disciplinary fields suggests little minimal causal impacts of knowledge, especially general, on individual behaviors. Taken together, this calls into question the value of a focus on sustainability literacy in sustainable development and suggests alternative approaches that may more effectively promote sustainable development.

Copyright
© 2025 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

<Previous Article In Volume
Next Article In Volume>
Volume Title
Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (ICoSaPS 2024)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
4 March 2025
ISBN
978-2-38476-368-9
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-368-9_21How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2025 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Colin Kuehl
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/03/04
TI  - Sustainability Literacy and Sustainable Outcomes Questioning the Utility of a Contested Concept
BT  - Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (ICoSaPS 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 222
EP  - 227
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-368-9_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-368-9_21
ID  - Kuehl2025
ER  -