Abstract

A botanical garden can provide knowledge and cultivate environmental awareness in its visitors. However, botanical gardens in developing countries are confronted with a unique problem—their staff members often lack sufficient knowledge to provide effective informal learning. To overcome this, our case study combines both environmental education (EE) and service marketing concept to create an environmental education framework (EE framework). This mixed methodology approach was studied among community leaders, executives, and staff members of Thai botanical gardens. These findings reveal that an EE framework must consist of ten factors where EE is employed as an educational process to provide knowledge to target groups. This EE framework can help promote informal learning in botanical gardens more effectively, as the transferring feasibility of the EE framework to other botanical gardens is at a very high level. As a result, proper implementation of this new EE framework via staff members can help botanical gardens in developing countries maximize their potential as a center for informal learning, ultimately cultivating environmental awareness in its visitors.