Nature-Related Experience during Childhood in Urban and Rural Areas: The Case of Peninsular Malaysians

Abstract

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.

Experiences in Nature and Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: Setting the Ground for Future Research

“…Given that individuals with a lower educational level generally hold weaker EA (Gifford and Nilsson, 2014), they may benefit the most from experiences in nature. Also, people living in rural areas tend to have more frequent contact with nature (Hinds and Sparks, 2008; Muslim et al, 2017) than those living in cities. Rural residents also differ from urban ones in their preference for different types of landscapes (Williams and Cary, 2002) and their daily type of contact with nature (Collado et al, 2015) which can influence the outcomes of experiences in nature.…”

A survey review on individual perception of environmental awareness in Andhra Pradesh

“…Those with a higher level of education are more likely to have heard of these concerns than those with a lower level of education. 28,29 The changes are not very noteworthy for the most well-known phenomena (the ozone layer loss); nevertheless, they become noticeable for the less well-publicized difficulties. Table 2 shows that although everyone with a high school diploma or more is aware of global warming, just 74% of those who still need to finish elementary school have heard of its effects.…”

Le chemin de l’école : un tiers-lieu vecteur d’apprentissages pour les enfants ?

“…Dans une vision manichéenne, les milieux ruraux peuvent être vus comme une source de bienêtre et de contact privilégié avec la nature tandis V a r i a que les milieux urbains comme des lieux ou les risques de dangers et d'accidents sont accrus. Des travaux le soulignent (voir Jutras, 2003 ;Mohamad Muslim et al, 2017), d'autres au contraire montrent le côté mystifié de cette vision Valentine, 1997). D'autres encore montrent que certains milieux très ruraux (en Afrique par exemple, voir Porter et al, 2010) peuvent être extrêmement dangereux pour certains enfants.…”