Children’s direct experiences of nature are increasingly recognised as important for promoting health and well-being and fostering pro-conservation attitudes and behaviours. Understanding why some children experience nature more frequently than others is therefore important. Although parents can play a major role in shaping children’s engagement with nature, the processes through which nature experiences persist across generations remain poorly understood.
Here, we conducted an online questionnaire survey of 1000 families in the Tokyo metropolitan area, Japan, obtaining matched responses from fathers, mothers, and one child per household. Children whose parents reported more frequent childhood nature experiences engaged with nature more frequently. Parental childhood nature experience was also associated with parental nature connectedness and perceptions of the benefits and risks of nature experiences.
Parental nature connectedness and facilitative behaviour were, in turn, positively associated with children’s nature experience, whereas perceived benefits and risks showed no direct associations. These findings suggest that nature experience can show continuity across generations, with parents’ childhood experiences potentially shaping how their children engage with nature through multiple psychological and behavioural pathways. Such intergenerational continuity may be an important process to consider in efforts to reverse the extinction of experience.
We thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions, which helped improve the manuscript. M.T. was supported by the Spring GX Project at the University of Tokyo. M.S. was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant no. 23K28273) and the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF16S11504) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency provided by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan.
Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 113-8657, Japan The authors declare no competing interests. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo (approval number: H25-020). Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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