A carregar...
Publicação
Perceptions of higher education students on bioeconomy: a comparative study between Portugal and Brazil
| Nome: | Descrição: | Tamanho: | Formato: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 685.01 KB | Adobe PDF |
Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
Currently, sustainability is a pressing issue, driven by environmental disasters caused by human activities that threaten the planet's life. Thus, the aim is to harmonize conflicts between economic, environmental, and social spheres by harnessing the ancestral knowledge of traditional communities and developing clean, innovative technologies that can mitigate the impacts of human actions, generate financial returns, and enhance social well-being. In this context, bioeconomy is considered by numerous scientists, politicians, and managers as a means to achieve sustainability or a bioeconomic state, as it conceives of the economy as dependent on nature; that is, the environment and the economy must be in balance in the same equation, which does not reduce economic activity to a mere mechanism nor nature to a source of raw materials. In this way, the bioeconomy encompasses biotechnology and bioresources, with the development of clean technologies using renewable raw materials to create new bio-based products, as well as bioecology, which involves valuing ecosystem services and promoting environmental protection. However, for the bioeconomy to be widely incorporated into concrete actions,
it needs broad social acceptance, since it will be people, especially young people of current and future generations, who will implement it. In this sense, the primary objective of this study was to investigate the perceptions and level of knowledge of young higher education students in Brazil and Portugal regarding the term 'Bioeconomy', and verify whether factors such as nationality, place of residence, and scientific field of study of the course attended influence their knowledge about the topic. A crosssectional, quantitative, analytical survey was conducted using an online questionnaire. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 28, and the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare knowledge levels between the two nationalities, controlling for place of residence and field of study. The survey received 878 responses, with 74.9% of respondents being of Portuguese nationality and 25.1% being Brazilian. It was found that Brazilian students are more familiar with the term Bioeconomy (53.2%) than Portuguese respondents (37.1%). Furthermore, Brazilians also have a higher level of knowledge, with 47.2% of students classified as having a very good or good level, compared to 22.6% for the Portuguese. Regarding sociodemographic data, for the Brazilian group, an association was observed between place of residence and the level of knowledge in Bioeconomy, with a higher level of knowledge among residents of urban areas. For the Portuguese, the difference was observed in the field of study, with a greater inclination towards Biological Sciences, Agricultural Sciences, and Engineering. Thus, public and private initiatives in countries related to sustainable development and the bioeconomy directly influence students' knowledge and support for the bioeconomy since Brazil makes significant investments in higher education, science, and technology linked to the bioeconomy, which can be evidenced by the higher level of knowledge about the bioeconomy among Brazilians.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Bioeconomy Sustainability Perceptions Portugal Brazil
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Ribeiro, M.I.B., Tomazini, C.E.G.., Perondi, M.A., Fernandes, A.P.R, Fernandes, A.I.R., Fernandes, A.J.G. (2026). Perceptions of higher education students on bioeconomy: a comparative study between Portugal and Brazil. In Proceedings of INTED2026 Conference, p. 1-8. ISBN 978-84-09-82385-7
Editora
IATED