In the light of climate change, our focus is progressively shifting to environmental education and conservation. To help teachers teach these topics more effectively, we looked at what influences students' attitudes towards nature conservation and utilisation. A questionnaire was used to collect information about the respondents and their motivation for visiting the outdoors and to test the student's views on the conservation and utilization of nature using a 5-point Likert scale. We included the 2-MEV questionnaire, a tool created to monitor the attitude towards nature and environment in adolescents (Bogner et al., 2006), which we translated and adapted. One general and one vocational secondary school, with a total of 263 students from 1st to 3rd year, participated in the survey. The results showed that gender has the biggest impact on attitudes towards conservation and utilisation, with girls showing a more positive attitude towards conservation and a more negative attitude towards utilisation than boys. The attitude towards nature conservation is also influenced by the students' general predisposition to pursue studies in natural sciences in the future and their predominant motive for visiting nature. No statistically significant differences were found for the influence of living environment, age and school on attitude formation.
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