The planning and design of environmental education sites from the perspective of pro-environmental behavior

Pro-environmental behavior (PEB) can help facilitate sustainable development, and PEB intervention strategies are developed to guarantee PEB effects. However, in most cases PEB intervention is given less importance than environmental education.

There is no specific programming for PEB intervention, and a full-cycle framework for planning and design that includes site operation and maintenance stages is still absent.

Based on literature review and the authors' experience on environment education activities, this article summarizes the PEB intervention strategies applicable to landscape planning and design, and comes up with a planning and design framework for environmental education sites, which consists of stages of site investigation, PEB intervention planning, development of design briefs, facility planning and design, maintenance and management programming, post-occupancy evaluation, and adjustment.

The framework would provide guidance for the landscape planners and designers to improve PEB intervention effects, and offer new insights and tools for site operators and researchers.

This article provides suggestions on planning and design of environmental education sites from the perspective of PEB intervention. However, it sees limitations:

1. the PEB intervention strategies in this article are based on the findings of western researchers, which have not been widely applied in China;
2. given the significant variety among environmental education sites, the planning and design framework proposed in this article should be altered according to the actual conditions of the sites in practice;
3. the framework is developed for multi-profession teams, which might limit its application and promotion.

At the same time, this article proposes several directions for future research and practice on the planning and design of environmental education sites.

1. Such projects generally cover a wide scope, among which PEB intervention planning and site operation are especially challenging for landscape designers.
2. To guarantee the realization of expected effects after project implementation, developing precise design briefs is critical.
3. No research has suggested that the PEB intervention effect in the wild (e.g. national parks, natural reserves) is better than that in artificial environments (e.g. community gardens, campuses), and designers are encouraged to pay attention to environmental education sites in built contexts.
4. Long-term project evaluation mechanism should be put in place to enhance the empirical research on PEB intervention, thereby improving the competence of the design profession in a systematic way.

The research is published in the journal Landscape Architecture Frontiers.