OUTDOOR RECREATION PARTICIPATION, NATURE RELATEDNESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

Understanding the effects of outdoor recreational experiences on nature relatedness and environmental attitudes is a key to effective nature management. So, present study aimed to analyse nature relatedness and environmental attitude among university students who participated in outdoor recreation or not. 884 university students, chosen in a random way, voluntarily participated in the study. To collect data, in addition to personal information form nature relatedness scale and environmental attitudes scale were used. In the evaluation of the data, Cronbach' s alpha calculated for all the sub-dimensions and independent samples t-test was used as hypothesis tests alpha = 0.05. According to analysed results, there was no significant difference among participants' (N = 884) nature relatedness, environmental behaviour and environmental thoughts according to participation in outdoor recreation, on the other hand there were significant differences according to whether they had any curriculum lesson about environment. As a conclusion, this study showed that no matter university students participated in outdoor recreation or not, they do not differ in nature connectedness and environmental attitude, however students who took education about environment had more connectedness with nature and environmental behaviour.