Photo taken by the first author on a wild camping trip in Scotland.

By Dr Samantha Friedman, Sara McHaffie, Roan Noble, and Dr Anna Stenning.

Read the full paper here.

The term ‘connection to nature’ is used to refer to the relationship that a person feels with the natural world. While a lot of research exists exploring topics related to connection to nature, this research has not yet focused on the perspectives of autistic people. Additionally, this research sometimes blames disabled people for environmental problems (for example, by suggesting that autism might present a barrier to pro-environmental behaviour) or treats disabled people disrespectfully in other ways (for instance, by using words like ‘deafness’ and ‘blindness’ to explain causes of human-nature disconnection; see Schmidt (2023) for a detailed discussion of this topic). To begin to correct this problem, we explored how autistic people experience and define connection to nature. 

We conducted a survey of autistic adults living in the UK to ask them about their experiences in nature. We focused on just one of the survey questions, which asked participants what the term ‘connection to nature’ meant to them. 108 autistic adults responded to this question, and we analysed their responses using reflexive thematic analysis, which is a way of developing meaning from patterns in the data. Using participants’ responses and our own knowledge and experiences of this field, we developed three themes to represent how we think this group of participants defined and experienced connection to nature: ‘feeling that you benefit nature and nature benefits you’; ‘connecting with something ancient to which I nevertheless belong’; and ‘it makes me a little sad tbh [to be honest].’

The participants in this study shared that having a relationship with nature offered them benefits, like feeling safe and having positive sensory experiences. Some participants believed that their autistic identity helped them to have a stronger relationship with nature. Participants also described connection to nature as a spiritual or religious experience. However, not everyone felt they knew what connection to nature meant or that they had a relationship with nature, and some participants shared that having a strong connection to nature brought along negative elements, too.

We hope these findings help researchers and practitioners working to promote connection to nature to reflect on how they can better include and represent the experiences of a wider range of people, including autistic people.