The focus of this study was on the underlying themes that form children's concepts of nature and on their place of residence as a factor in shaping how they think about the natural world. Data were collected from 832 children (aged 6–12) living in three areas of Spain: urban, rural mountain range, and rural agricultural.
Children's concept of nature was measured using an open-ended question: 'What do you think about when you hear the word “nature”?' In addition to providing a written response to this question, children also completed a written questionnaire addressing the frequency of their daily exposure to nearby nature and the appearance of nature-related issues in their daily conversations. Their responses were registered on a 5-point, Likert-type scale.
Content analysis of the written narratives revealed four themes relating to children's conceptualizations of the natural world: (1) natural and non-natural elements (mentioned by 93% of the participants); (2) the human–nature relationship (40.34%); (3) emotional experience of nature (27.15%); and (4) actions in natural settings (52%).
Children's daily frequency of contact with nature varied across groups. Children living in the urban area had less daily contact with nature than those living in the mountain range or in the agricultural area. Additionally, nature appeared most frequently as the conversation topic of children from the rural agricultural area, followed by those in the mountain range. Nature-related issues appeared the least often in conversations of children living in the urban area.
There were also differences in the content of children's descriptions of their nature-related experiences. Urban participants tended to talk about past experiences in natural places and about sporadic experiences, usually far away from cities. Rural children, on the other hand, described day-to-day encounters with nature. Urban children were also more likely to mention non-natural elements when describing what nature is compared to children from the mountain range and from the agricultural area. Overall, children were aware of the fact that people depend on nature to survive. This relationship of dependency, however, was more present in the narratives of children in rural areas. While urban children noted that nature is important for people to live, they did so in an abstract way. Rural children viewed nature as a means of sustenance and had more salient pro-environmental attitudes than urban children.
Results of this study indicated that that children living in different areas do not necessarily experience nature in the same way and may thus understand nature differently.
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