A photo of wildflowers in Greece captured by the first author.

By Alexia Barrable, Samantha Friedman, and Vassiliki Beloyianni.

Read the full paper here.

In this paper, we wanted to find out if there is a relationship between the type and frequency of nature activities that people took part in as children and their experiences and relationships with nature as adults. Nature connection refers to the relationships that humans have with the rest of the natural world. Many people across a range of academic disciplines are interested in exploring nature connection because stronger connection to nature is often related to better wellbeing. Previous research has suggested that the relationship and experiences that a person has with nature while in childhood has a strong influence on their likelihood to spend time in nature and care about nature as an adult. Existing research has also explored what types of activities and interventions might help make someone’s connection to nature stronger. While research has been conducted in places like New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and Brazil, there has not been very much research on this subject in Greece.

Using an online survey, we captured responses from 401 Greek-speaking adults. We asked them about the type of nature activities they took part in as children, the frequency of those activities in childhood, their connection with nature as adults, and the experiences they have in nature as adults. We used statistical analyses to answer our research questions, and we found that participants who had more frequent nature experiences in childhood were more likely to be highly connected to nature as adults. However, unlike some previous research on this subject, our findings suggested that the experiences that people had in nature as adults did not explain this relationship between childhood nature experiences and adult nature connection. We also found that older adults were more likely to have participated in unstructured outdoor activities like flower picking and generally spending time alone outdoors during childhood. These findings are useful for telling us how we can promote a close relationship with nature across the life course through encouraging time outside in childhood.