Abstract
The new concept of relational values (RVs) is gaining more and more attention in environmental research, but empirical analyses are still rare. However, this type of research is necessary because the RVs have an influence on environmental behavior. To evaluate the impact of biological education on attributing higher importance to RVs and connectedness to nature, we compared the connection to nature scores (using the inclusion of nature scale (INS) and connectedness to nature scale (CNS)) and RV scores of biologically interested high school students (n = 417) with first year (n = 593) and advanced biology (n = 223) students. While high school students showed significant lower connection to nature scores than university students, there was no significant difference in RVs between the test groups. These results suggest that there is a lack of factors in the university study of biology that can change RVs. The gender comparison of RVs and connection to nature showed a significant higher RV score for females while INS and CNS did not show a gender difference. Thus, the study makes an important contribution to the research, as it was able to prove that gender has an influence on a person's RVs but not on their connection to nature.
Highlights
In our modern Western world, the relationship of humans to nature is undergoing a massive change
The individual human nature connection does not show any gender difference, which leads to the conclusion that the individual’s own and personal relationship to nature is less subject to social norms and institutional influences
In the context of environmental education, it was shown that the individual human-nature connection can be increased through biological education, the relational values (RVs) cannot
Summary
In our modern Western world, the relationship of humans to nature is undergoing a massive change. Adults and children spend more time indoors and less time in a natural environment. Robinson and Silvers [1] used a one-day diary to show that 51% of American adults spend nearly no time outside. A national report revealed that the increasing time Americans spend with electronic media and devices and greater isolation from nature are major causes of their growing disconnection from nature [2]. Many recent studies have reported a significant proportion of time that children and adolescents spend with media. In a survey conducted among Spanish secondary school students, half of the participants reported watching television for more than two hours on a normal weekday. The number of students surveyed using a computer for more than two hours a day was over 60% [3]. The Youth Report 2016 surveyed 1,253 sixth- and ninth-graders in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) and found that more than half (57%) of the participants
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