关键词: 保护领导力, 环保社团, 亲环境行动, 大学生

Abstract

Aims: Improving conservation leadership is essential for developing a new generation of citizens who possess the leadership and action skills required for future biodiversity conservation efforts. This research centers on college students who are members of environmental clubs, aiming to explore the impact of college environmental clubs on the development of college students' core competencies in conservation leadership.

Methods: This research employing a mixed-methods approach that integrates qualitative interviews and questionnaires to analyze the interview data by means of rooted theory three-level coding in order to identify the constructs of conservation leadership core competencies, and t-tests, correlation analyses, multiple regression analyses, and path analyses to explore the relationship between participation in college environmental clubs and conservation leadership core competencies and pro-environmental actions.

Results: The conservation leadership core competencies concept encompasses a multifaceted dimension that encompasses biodiversity knowledge, conservation vision, interpersonal skills, and empowering leadership. Membership in a college environmental club and active participation in club activities have been demonstrated to significantly enhance participants' core conservation leadership competencies, particularly in the domains of biodiversity knowledge, conservation vision, interpersonal skills, and empowering leadership. Additionally, these experiences have been found to indirectly influence pro-environmental action. Path analysis revealed that participation in environmental clubs had a significant effect on all aspects of core conservation leadership competencies, with participation in environmental clubs directly and positively influencing an individual's biodiversity knowledge (β = 0.02, P < 0.01), conservation vision (β = 0.18, P < 0.001), interpersonal skills (β = 0.08, P < 0.001), and empowering leadership (β = 0.04, P = 0.09). Meanwhile, the core conservation leadership competencies significantly predicted pro-environmental action, with conservation vision (β = 0.43, P < 0.001) and empowering leadership (β = 0.52, P < 0.01) showing significant positive predictions of pro-environmental action, and biodiversity knowledge (β = -0.17, P < 0.01) and interpersonal skills (β = -0.12, P < 0.01) were significantly negatively correlated with pro-environmental action. T-tests indicated that college students who participated in college environmental clubs demonstrated enhanced effectiveness in conservation vision (pre-test mean = 4.26, SD = 0.40; post-test mean = 4.31, SD = 0.45), interpersonal skills (pre-test mean = 3.74, SD = 0.49; post-test mean = 3.82, SD = 0.46), and empowering leadership. (pre-test Mean = 3.95, SD = 0.41; post-test Mean = 4.03, SD = 0.52) and pro-environmental action (pre-test Mean = 3.59, SD = 0.54; post-test Mean = 3.81, SD = 0.63) demonstrated an increase, although only the pro-environmental action reached a statistically significant level.

Conclusions: Encouraging and supporting college students to form and participate in environmental clubs, as well as to initiate environmental projects, can significantly contributes to the development of conservation leadership competencies among college students. This approach offers an effective educational model for advancing biodiversity conservation education.

Key words: conservation leadership, environmental club, pro-environmental action, college students