• Energy Research

Nowadays, the issues related with environment preservation assume an increasing importance. Progressively, more sustainable solutions/techniques are being developed to combat environmental destruction. The decision to include themes related to the environment in the curriculum of technological courses in higher education aims to promote more sustainable behaviors and in an indirect way, increase the environmental literacy of the population. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the environmental literacy focusing on four topics, i.e., air pollution, water pollution, global warming, and energy resources. For this purpose, a questionnaire was developed and applied to a convenience sample, formed by individuals of both genders, aged between 20 and 81 years old. The questionnaire intended to collect data to characterize the sample and assess the literacy regarding environmental issues. In order to carry out the environmental literacy assessment, the respondents were asked to express their degree of agreement with some statements related with the environmental themes mentioned above. The data collected was analyzed using data mining tools. The results suggest that the population’s literacy is satisfactory in relation to some issues, but insufficient in relation to others, equally important, but less disseminated.

In today’s world, the importance of preserving the environment has become increasingly evident. As a result, more sustainable solutions and techniques are being developed to combat environmental destruction. Higher education institutions are now including environmental themes in their technological courses to promote sustainable behavior and indirectly enhance environmental literacy among the population. This study aims to evaluate the level of literacy to biotechnological solutions for environmental sustainability in four areas, namely Air Pollution, Aquatic Pollution, Global Warming, and Energy Resources. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to a sample consisting of 471 individuals of both genders, age range between 15 and 78 years old, to collect data characterizing the sample and assess their literacy in environmental issues. The questionnaire was distributed in Portugal, and the participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement with several statements related to the aforementioned environmental themes. The findings suggest that literacy regarding biotechnological solutions for environmental sustainability is influenced by age group and academic qualifications. The age group above 65 years old is the one with the lowest levels of literacy, exhibiting frequencies of response I don’t know exceeding 50% in 10 out of the 22 issues present in the questionnaire. The findings also suggest that the levels of literacy are higher in the thematic areas of Global Warming and Aquatic Pollution and lower in the thematic areas of Air Pollution and Energy Resources, with lower levels of literacy in the issues that have not been widely disseminated by the media. Additionally, a model based on Artificial Neural Networks was presented to predict literacy to biotechnological solutions for environmental sustainability. The proposed model performs well, achieving accuracy rates of 90.8% for the training set and 86.6% for the test set.