How Different Types of Knowledge Affect the Energy-saving Intention of College Students—evidence From Eye-tracking Experiments

As one of the means to promote college students’ energy-saving intention, knowledge education has received significant attention. However, the effects of different types of knowledge need to be explored in depth. Knowledge was classified from two dimensions in this paper: direct/specific and instrumental/emancipatory. Then, an eye-tracking experiment was used to explore the effects of different types of knowledge. Experimental groups were divided according to the types of knowledge. After knowledge education, the change degree of energy-saving intention and activation degree of reference points were recorded. Then, correlation and difference tests were used to analyze the data. The results show the following: First, based on the dimension of emancipatory and instrumental, adding the dimension of directional and specific is conducive to distinguishing the impact of knowledge on energy-saving intention. Second, the specific-instrumental knowledge leads to a positive intention the most obviously, while the specific-emancipatory the least. Thirdly, the activation degree of positive and negative reference points can be used to reflect the improvement of energy-saving intention.