A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Swedish Upper Secondary School Students' Conceptions of Negative Environmental Impact and Pricing

  2013. Caroline Ignell, Peter Davies, Cecilia Lundholm. Sustainability 5 (3), 982-996

  Article

  This study explores relationships between upper secondary school students. understanding of prices and environmental impacts. The study uses responses from 110 students to problems in which they were asked to explain differences in prices and also to express and justify opinions on what should be the difference in prices. Very few students expressed an environmental dimension in their understanding of price. A few students suggested that environmental impact influenced price by raising demand for Environmentally friendly products. A few students suggested that, environmentally friendly products. had higher prices because they were more costly to produce. We found no examples of students combining both lines of explanation. However, nearly half of the students believed that prices should reflect environmental effects, and this reasoning was divided between cases where the point was justified by a broad environmental motivation and cases where the point was justified in relation to incentives-to get consumers to act in a more environmentally friendly way.

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• Understanding ’Price’ and the Environment

  2017. Caroline Ignell, Peter Davies, Cecilia Lundholm. Journal of Social Science Education 16 (1), 68-80

  Article

  Purpose: To explore changes in upper secondary students´ conceptions of environmental issues in how prices are determined and how they should be determined. Design:The study uses an ’alternative frameworks’ conceptual change approach to examine change in the conceptions of fifteen business and economic students. Students were asked about the prices of familiar products and asked to explain prices for eco-friendly and eco-unfriendly products. A first interview was conducted in the second year of education and the second interview a year later when students were 18 years old and in the final year of schooling. Interviews were carried out out by a researcher independent from the schools and carried out in schools. Findings: Identifies the fragmentary nature of students´ every-day thinking in relation to productivity, consumer preference and negative externalities. Results show characteristics of partial conceptions, which are considered as students´ conceptions in a process of change towards a more scientific understanding of relationships between price and environmental impacts. Practical implications: The study clarifies conceptions, which students bring to the classroom and the directions thatdevelopment in understanding may take. The study should help teachers to design effective strategies to support students’ learning.

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• A longitudinal study of upper secondary school students’ values and beliefs regarding policy responses to climate change

  Caroline Ignell, Peter Davies, Cecilia Lundholm.

  This article explores changes of environmental values and beliefs among secondary school business and economics students regarding government and market solutions to climate change. A longitudinal survey was administrated to students at two occasions including 212 participants in the first measurement. Results show a small significant increase in importance for altruistic, biospheric and egoistic value orientations at average. At individual level, there are substantial movements over time, 60% of the students change strength in values over time. Taxes and legislations are the most effective solutions to climate change however there was a decrease in seeing market prices as useful measurements. Analysis suggested no direct relationship between change in value orientation and change in norms. However indirect associations was found mediated by changing beliefs in the efficacy of education and information and the efficacy of tax policies. For example, students who became more egoistic and more convinced about the efficacy of tax were less likely than others to be willing to take personal actions. 

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Show all publications by Caroline Ignell at Stockholm University