Marine litter: a review of educative interventions

Marine litter is claimed to be one of the most meaningful environmental crises of the century. Education that supports behavior change is a tool to tackle this problem. However, there is a lack of research linking educational initiatives and marine litter issues. A literature review was conducted through a bibliometric and content analysis to explore the state of knowledge regarding educational actions. The results revealed that 2019 was the year with the highest number of publications and that 83.4% of the documents were collaborative efforts. Concerning educational approaches, hands-on and technological activities are being explored to raise awareness and stimulate behavior change. Students and questionnaires represent, respectively, the most common audience and evaluating method. More integrative actions and respective long-term methodological triangulation evaluation were identified as necessary in future studies. This paper is expected to contribute to innovative knowledge in the area by identifying the main gaps in the literature.This work was supported by the Fundação ao para a Ciência e Tecnologia I.P. (FCT) [grant SFRH/BD/147085/2019 to Sara Bettencourt].CENSE is financed by FCT [UID/AMB/04085/2019] as well as MARE [UID/MAR/04292/2020]. OOM and Sonia ´ Costa are financed by European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) [M1420-01-0145-FEDER000001-Observatório Oceânico da Madeira-OOM].