Environmental educators and other conservation practitioners are generally aware of positive links between connection to nature (CTN) and pro-environmental behavior. They thus look for tools or strategies that promote connection to nature. This study assessed the efficacy of bird feeders as tools to connect people to nature.
Students from 19 sixth-grade classes and their parents participated in this study. One group (the experimental group) received bird feeders and bird seed. Another group (the control group) did not get feeders and bird seed. All participating students and their parents completed a connection to nature scale before and after the study period which lasted approximately one month. The objective of the study was to determine if people who own feeders have greater CTN than those who do not. Two strategies were used to assess this relationship. The first strategy involved comparing baseline (first assessment) CTN of those who entered the study having previously owned a feeder with baseline CTN of those who entered the study without having owned a feeder. The second strategy involved assessing changes in CTN scores between the pre- and post-intervention surveys.
Baseline assessment results showed that previous owners of bird feeders had significantly greater connections to nature compared to those who did not. Pre-test/post-test assessments showed that adults in the experimental group who did not previously own a feeder experienced significant increases in CTN. Adults in the control group and those who previously owned feeders did not. Twenty-four of the twenty-eight parents in the experimental group said they enjoyed watching the feeder. The other four were neutral. The CTN increases experienced by parents who became new owners of feeders were similar to or greater than CTN increases reported by some studies of tourism, zoo, and museum interventions. CTN of students in both groups did not change over the study period. According to the researcher, the “no change” scores of students may be due to the survey instrument not being able to detect changes in CTN. Another possible explanation may relate to the fact that “sixth-graders may experience significantly lower increases in CTN compared to younger age groups in response to environmental education.” Fifty-one of eighty-five students in the experimental group said they enjoyed watching birds at the feeder; and more than half of the experimental students and their parents were willing to continue filling the feeder after the study's close.
This research demonstrated that new ownership of a bird feeder may increase CTN in adults. While this increase did not apply to children, bird feeders as an intervention could potentially impact children, as well. Parents with increased CTN may decide to spend more time in nature with their families, and thus possibly promote their children's CTN. Bird feeders, as a tool for promoting CTN, may be especially effective for people who do not have access to place-based interventions such as zoos, museums, and parks. Bird feeders have the advantage of being less expensive and more accessible than many other environmental education interventions. In addition to being relatively inexpensive, advantages of bird feeders as an environmental education tool include the fact that they (1) can be placed in most urbanized landscapes, (2) can increase the nature encounter rate through multiple observations each day, and (3) tend to be encountered in the company of other people.
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