Nature club programs promote adolescents’ conservation behavior: A case study in China’s biodiversity hotspot

Abstract

Outdoor education programs are promoted to enhance connections between individuals and nature to foster pro-environmental behavior. However, behavioral change is a complex, and often difficult psychological process. This study aimed to determine if establishing nature clubs in schools could promote students’ conservation behaviors by mitigating traditional hunting and insect eating in Xishuangbanna, China. Outcomes were assessed using questionnaires and interviews. The program enhanced adolescents’ self-reported animal conservation through persuading others not to hunt birds and not eat native insects. Thus, we propose that nature kits and recommendations derived from this program can serve as guides for developing similar campaigns elsewhere.

Keywords:

• adolescents
• conservation
• environmental education
• perceived behavioral control
• theory of planned behavior

Acknowledgments

We thank the students and their school principals for participating in the survey. We thank E. Goodale for his insightful comments, which helped us improve the survey, and S. F. Hu, M. Wu, and S. F. Cai for their help with interviewing. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on a previous version of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chinese Academic Science 135 Program (grant number 2017XTBG-F04) and the Chinese Union of Botanical Gardens (grant number KFJ-1W-NO1-11).