Sustainable impact of Iskandar Malaysia Ecolife Challenge (IMELC) on the low carbon awareness and practice among students

Abstract

Iskandar Malaysia Ecolife Challenge (IMELC) started in 2013 among Year 6 students (12 years old) to foster low carbon awareness and practice. In order to trace the sustainability of the low carbon awareness and practice, a survey was carried out in 2016 to determine if the students maintain the awareness and practice. A number of 4,439 secondary students from Form 1 until Form 4 participated in the survey. The questionnaire constructed has an acceptable level of reliability of 0.686 using Cronbach’s alpha analysis. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to determine the differences between IMELC and NO IMELC group. The analysis shows that students who have undergone IMELC obtained higher mean scores in terms of the awareness and practice but lower in knowledge. Further analysis using t-test shows that the differences are significant. The discussion suggested that, the strength of IMELC is in changing the behavioral characteristic and have not yet capable for behavioral change.