Bird Feeders Increase Connection to Nature in Parents But Not in Their Children

Abstract

Given connection to nature is positively correlated with proenvironmental behavior, strategies to facilitate human-nature interactions are necessary to mitigate the anthropogenic effects of urbanization to the environment. I assessed the efficacy of bird feeders as tools to connect people to nature in sixth graders and parents. I visited 19 participating classes assigned as experimental (i.e., I gave them feeders and bird seed) and control (i.e., I did not give them feeders and bird seed) groups. Participants who entered the study having previously owned feeders had significantly greater baseline connections to nature compared to those who did not. Pretest/posttest assessments suggested that over the course of a 1-month intervention, adults who did not previously own a feeder in experimental classrooms experienced significant increases in connection, while those in control classrooms and those who previously owned feeders did not. However, students' connections to nature did not change regardless of group. Parents who became new owners of feeders experienced similar, or greater, percent increases in connection to nature compared to some studies of tourism, zoo, and museum experiences, suggesting feeders may be as effective as interventions that may be more logistically and financially challenging to employ in some settings.