Student Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Wood and the Use of Wood as a Raw Material

Abstract

There is much uncertainty about the attitude toward raw wood material use: Is the widerange use of unprocessed wood recommended or not? In our statistically representative questionnaire survey completed in Győr-Moson-County schools in Hungary, we aimed to discover which components of attitude determine the willingness of future energy users to use wood. A novelty of our study is that we investigated three components of attitude in the context of wood use, i.e., the cognitive, the affective, and the conative components. We used Decision Trees in statistics, hitherto unemployed in wood-related environmental education research, to predict the willingness to use the raw wood material. Our study is relevant to sustainable development and climate protection. Our results revealed that only one-third of participants provided an affirmative response to the question of whether they would use raw wood material. Furthermore, we found that the affective component of attitude is a stronger predictor than the cognitive component, with the conative component not being a predictor. In light of these results, we recommend popularizing forest programs since the attitude-changing effect of forest programs has been confirmed.