The psychological and social benefits of a nature experience for children: A preliminary investigation

Childhood nature connection and constructive hope: A review of research on connecting with nature and coping with environmental loss

“…In different studies, extended time meant 3–5days of immersion in residential field sites (Braun & Dierkes, 2017; Hinds & O'Malley, 2019; Liefländer et al., 2013; Mullenbach, Andrejewski, & Mowen, 2019; Stern, Powell, & Ardoin, 2008; Talebpour, Busk, Heimlich, & Ardoin, 2020), 4 days to 2 weeks enrolled in nature‐based camps or wilderness expeditions (Barton, Bragg, Pretty, Roberts, & Wood, 2016; Collado et al., 2013; Ernst & Theimer, 2011; San Jose & Nelson, 2017), 4 weeks of nature play and learning in a preschool (Yilmaz, Çig, & Yilmaz‐Bolat, 2020), repeated field trips to natural areas (Ernst & Theimer, 2011) and school curricula that last several weeks and include hands‐on nature experiences (Cho & Lee, 2018; Harvey et al., 2020; Sheldrake et al., 2019). But even programs that involved only a day of classroom lessons about forests combined with activities in a forest (Kossack & Bogner, 2012), a few hours of forest exploration (Dopko, Capaldi, & Zelenski, 2019; Schneider & Schaal, 2018) or trips to natural areas or a natural history museum (Bruni, Ballew, Winter, & Omoto, 2018; Crawford et al., 2017; Sheldrake et al., 2019) resulted in immediate significant gains in nature connection scores.…”

Connectedness to Nature: Its Impact on Sustainable Behaviors and Happiness in Children

“…One of the studies carried out on this topic on children is that of García et al (2017), which expounds a relationship between connectedness to nature and pro-ecological behaviors; likewise, Collado et al (2013) report a significant association between emotional affinity toward nature and ecological behaviors; finally, Capaldi et al (2019) indicate that when children are in greater contact with nature, they report a greater willingness to protect it and be more pro-social.…”

The Relationship Between Green Space and Prosocial Behaviour Among Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

“…Even though there was no restriction for publication date applied, all eligible studies were published between 2012-2019 and more than half (66.7%) were published in the last 3 years (2017-2019). There was an equal number (six studies) of crosssectional (Odgers et al, 2012;Amoly et al, 2014;Balseviciene et al, 2014;Sobko et al, 2018;Whitten et al, 2018;Andrusaityte et al, 2019) and experimental studies (Carrus et al, 2015;Park et al, 2016;Mayfield et al, 2017;Bates et al, 2018;van Dijk-Wesselius et al, 2018;Dopko et al, 2019). The remaining studies were of a longitudinal design (Richardson et al, 2017;McEachan et al, 2018;Van Aart et al, 2018).…”

“…Out of two single group experimental studies, one study was a single group post-test only experiment (Bates et al, 2018), whereas another used a single group pre-post design (Park et al, 2016). The other four experimental studies reported using a control group, including two studies with- (Mayfield et al, 2017;van Dijk-Wesselius et al, 2018) and two without pre-test (Carrus et al, 2015;Dopko et al, 2019), respectively. Moreover, two (Richardson et al, 2017;McEachan et al, 2018), eight (Amoly et al, 2014;Balseviciene et al, 2014;Park et al, 2016;Mayfield et al, 2017;Van Aart et al, 2018;van Dijk-Wesselius et al, 2018;Whitten et al, 2018;Andrusaityte et al, 2019), and five (Odgers et al, 2012;Carrus et al, 2015;Bates et al, 2018;Sobko et al, 2018; About 700 (7-11 years)…”

“…Sample size and age of participants differed by included study. Small sample sizes (<100) were reported in two experimental studies (Carrus et al, 2015;Dopko et al, 2019), whilst the largest sample size was observed in a cross-sectional study of 26,848 Australian children aged 11.9 years on average (Whitten et al, 2018). Two experimental studies recorded the number of person-observations as the unit of analysis instead of number of participants (Mayfield et al, 2017;Bates et al, 2018).…”