‘Love honey, hate honey bees’: reviving biophilia of elementary school students through environmental education program

Abstract

The concept of emotional affinity and connection with nature using the term of ‘biophilia’ along with its counter-part ‘biophobia’ has been merely researched in the area of environmental education. In this study, it was hypothesized that children’s negative emotions (biophobia) such as fear towards insects can be changed into affinity (biophilia) through an environmental education program. One hundred and four third-grade students from an elementary school in Seoul, South Korea participated in the honey bee environmental education program, and their emotional changes were measured with Inclusion of Nature in Self and Connectedness to Nature Scale. The result after the program implementation showed that the participants’ affinity toward nature was significantly improved. This empirical study suggests that an environmental education programs on insects of which children initially feel scared can be effective in helping to overcome fear toward insects and nature, and to revive their innate biophilia. Especially, honey bees, one of the most crucial insect species providing priceless ecosystem services can be a good medium for environmental education program to promote children’s innate love towards nature. This study, to the authors’ knowledge, was the first research which attempted to link an insect-mediated environmental education program to children’s connectedness to nature with the biophilia–biophobia approach.

Keywords:

• Biophilia
• biophobia
• inclusion of nature in self
• connectedness to nature
• insect-ecology education

Acknowledgements

First, we thank the four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions for this manuscript. We also wish to thank the Asian Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Seoul National University and the National Beekeeping Agricultural Cooperative Federation (Yangbong NongHyup) of Korea for the support throughout the research. We also would like to appreciate Urban Bees Seoul for their consultative support during the program implementation. We also appreciate Dr Namsoo Kim (Seoul National University) and Prof. Dongwook Koh (Kookmin University) for their reviews on the first manuscript of this study.