From parents to children: how nature experiences are transmitted across generations

Children’s direct experiences of nature are increasingly recognised as important for promoting health and well-being and fostering pro-conservation attitudes and behaviours. Understanding why some children experience nature more frequently than others is therefore important. Although parents can play a major role in shaping children’s engagement with nature, the processes through which nature experiences persist across generations remain poorly understood. Here, we conducted an online questionnaire survey of 1000 families in the Tokyo metropolitan area, Japan, obtaining matched responses from fathers, mothers, and one child per household. Children whose parents reported more frequent childhood nature experiences engaged with nature more frequently. Parental childhood nature experience was also associated with parental nature connectedness and perceptions of the benefits and risks of nature experiences. Parental nature connectedness and facilitative behaviour were, in turn, positively associated with children’s nature experience, whereas perceived benefits and risks showed no direct associations. These findings suggest that nature experience can show continuity across generations, with parents’ childhood experiences potentially shaping how their children engage with nature through multiple psychological and behavioural pathways. Such intergenerational continuity may be an important process to consider in efforts to reverse the extinction of experience.