Sometimes, an author will both draw upon and question certain traditions he/she is writing about; in this case, Markandaya is primarily interested in the cultural traditions of India. To 'draw...
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Direct experiences with nature in childhood are essential for enhancing psychological and physical development in children. However, researches on childhood nature-related experiences and their effects are largely biased toward more developed Western countries. In this study, we created a questionnaire on childhood experiences with nature and surveyed 357 adults (>20 years old) around Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to determine whether younger generations had fewer nature-based experiences than older generations and whether people who grew up in urban areas had fewer experiences than those who grew up in rural areas. We found that playing in rivers or waterfalls and collecting and eating tropical fruits were the most common nature-related activities experienced in childhood. There was a minimal decline in nature-related experiences among generations. However, people who grew up in rural areas had more nature-related experiences than those who grew up in urban areas. The loss of nature areas and increase in population density may accelerate the decline in nature-related experiences in urban areas. Therefore, efforts to create urban parks and other public spaces for reconnecting urban children to nature will become increasingly important for urban planning and environmental education in tropical developing countries such as Malaysia.
1. Introduction
Direct experiences with nature have substantial positive impacts on the mental, emotional, and social development of children [3, 4] and people’s behavior [5] and can encourage healthy lifestyles [6–9]. Experience with nature in childhood is particularly important for cultivating proenvironmental attitudes, behaviors, and moral judgments later in life [10–14]. For example, Lohr & Pearson-Mims [15] found a significant association between adult attitude toward natural entities such as trees and nature-based practices like gardening with childhood nature experiences. In addition, positive experiences with nature during childhood are major motivators in adult environmentalists to protect the environment [14, 16, 17]. Therefore, in the current “extinction of experience” era, it is important to understand how children relate to nature and how this connection has changed over time and among various sociodemographics. This is particularly urgent in developing countries experiencing rapid urbanization. However, our understanding of childhood nature-related experiences is largely biased toward more developed Western countries. Southeast Asia is a rapidly urbanizing region that has experienced drastic changes in and degradation of natural landscapes in the past few decades (e.g., [18]).
2.3. Survey Procedure
In January to March 2016, we visited randomly selected houses in the six study areas and conducted a face-to-face interview with one adult member (>20 years) at each household following the structured questionnaire. The survey was conducted in either English or Malay. We targeted 180 respondents in each area. No names and identification numbers were collected from the respondents.
2.
