The impact of an information leaflet about coffee production on students' awareness about environmental issues

This project was jointly conducted by Stoyan Faldzhiyskiy (Ecosystem Europe, Bulgaria) and Martin Huber (University of Fribourg, Switzerland) to experimentally assess the effect of an information leaflet about coffee production on students’ awareness about environmental issues as well as self-assessed buying behavior. To this end, Ecosystem Europe, an NGO in Bulgaria, conducted a survey about environmental and social impacts of coffee growing among high school pupils (439 observations) and university students (83 observations) in Bulgaria. At a particular point in the survey interview, students were either provided or not provided with an information leaflet with facts about coffee growing. The leaflet was quasi-randomized as it was distributed to every second student only. The leaflet contained textual and visual information about regions growing coffee, related deforestation, biodiversity loss, use of pesticides, economic and social implications, coffee’s water footprint, and the fact that most coffee biomass becomes waste. The results suggest that w.r.t. creating awareness about environmental issues, the leaflet had the largest (and statistically significant) impacts on older students, in particular among those attending non-technical universities, while the effects on younger (i.e. high school) students were mostly not statistically significantly different from zero.本研究由保加利亚生态欧洲（Ecosystem Europe）的斯托扬·法尔季伊斯基（Stoyan Faldzhiyskiy）与瑞士弗里堡大学（University of Fribourg）的马丁·胡贝尔（Martin Huber）联合开展，旨在通过实验评估咖啡生产宣传手册对学生环境意识及自我评估购买行为的影响。为此，保加利亚生态欧洲针对本国高中生（439份观测样本）与大学生（83份观测样本）开展了一项关于咖啡种植环境与社会影响的调研。在调研访谈的特定环节中，研究人员会向部分学生发放包含咖啡种植相关事实的宣传手册，其余学生则不予发放。该手册采用准随机分配方式，仅向每间隔一名的学生进行发放。手册涵盖文字与可视化信息，内容涉及咖啡种植产区、相关森林砍伐、生物多样性丧失、农药使用情况、经济与社会影响、咖啡水足迹，以及绝大多数咖啡生物质会成为废弃物等内容。研究结果表明，在提升环境意识方面，该宣传手册对年长学生的影响最为显著（且具有统计学意义），尤其是就读非理工类大学的学生群体；而对年轻学生（即高中生）的影响大多在统计学上与零无显著差异。