Impact of biological education and gender on students' connection to nature and relational values

The new concept of relational values (RVs) is gaining more and more attention in environmental research, but empirical analyses are still rare. However, this type of research is necessary because the RVs have an influence on environmental behavior. To evaluate the impact of biological education on a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-11, Vol.15 (11), p.e0242004-e0242004
Main Authors: Kleespies, Matthias Winfried, Dierkes, Paul Wilhelm
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Analysis
Attitudes
Beliefs, opinions and attitudes
Biology
Biology - education
Biology and Life Sciences
Cluster analysis
College students
Colleges & universities
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Education
Educational Status
Empirical analysis
Engineering and Technology
Environmental aspects
Environmental behavior
Environmental education
Environmental impact
Environmental research
Female
Gender
High school students
Humans
Humans and nature
Influence
Interpersonal Relations
Male
People and Places
Physical Sciences
Research and Analysis Methods
Sex differences (Psychology)
Sex Factors
Social Sciences
Students
Students, Medical - psychology
Universities
Values
Young Adult
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Summary:The new concept of relational values (RVs) is gaining more and more attention in environmental research, but empirical analyses are still rare. However, this type of research is necessary because the RVs have an influence on environmental behavior. To evaluate the impact of biological education on attributing higher importance to RVs and connectedness to nature, we compared the connection to nature scores (using the inclusion of nature scale (INS) and connectedness to nature scale (CNS)) and RV scores of biologically interested high school students (n = 417) with first year (n = 593) and advanced biology (n = 223) students. While high school students showed significant lower connection to nature scores than university students, there was no significant difference in RVs between the test groups. These results suggest that there is a lack of factors in the university study of biology that can change RVs. The gender comparison of RVs and connection to nature showed a significant higher RV score for females while INS and CNS did not show a gender difference. Thus, the study makes an important contribution to the research, as it was able to prove that gender has an influence on a person's RVs but not on their connection to nature.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0242004