Abstract

The design of the green infrastructure in urban areas largely ignores how people's relation to nature, or human-nature connection (HNC), can be nurtured. One practical reason for this is the lack of a framework to guide the assessment of where people, and more importantly children, experience significant nature situations and establish nature routines. This paper develops such a framework. We employed a mixed-method approach to understand what qualities of nature situations connect children to nature (RQ1), what constitutes children's HNC (RQ2), and how significant nature situations and children's HNC relate to each other over time (RQ3). We first interviewed professionals in the field of connecting children to nature (N = 26), performed inductive thematic analysis of these interviews, and then further examined the inductive findings by surveying specialists (N = 275). We identified 16 qualities of significant nature situations (e.g., "awe," "engagement of senses," "involvement ofmentors") and 10 abilities that constitute children's HNC (e. g., "feeling comfortable in natural spaces," " feeling attached to natural spaces," "taking care of nature"). We elaborated three principles to answer our research questions: (1) significant nature situations are various and with differing consequences for children's HNC; (2) children's HNC is a complex embodied ability; (3) children's HNC progresses over time through diverse nature routines. Together, these findings form the Assessment framework for Children's Human Nature Situations (ACHUNAS). ACHUNAS is a comprehensive framework that outlines what to quantify or qualify when assessing " child-nature connecting" environments. It guides the assessment of where and how children connect to nature, stimulating both the design of nature-connecting human habitats as well as pedagogical approaches to HNC.

Keywords

assessment framework; child-nature-connectedness; human-nature connection; significant nature situations; nature routines; sustainable urban design; environmental education; mix-method approach

Published in

Frontiers in Psychology
2018, Volume: 8, article number: 2283
Publisher: FRONTIERS MEDIA SA

SLU Authors

• Raymond, Christopher

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

Nature experiences and health


Sustainable Development Goals

SDG11 Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
SDG4 Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all


UKÄ Subject classification

Applied Psychology
Economic Geography


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02283

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/93478