Early life experiences of natural environments and outdoor activities, some occurring in pre-school and early school years, have been suggested as ways to increase connectedness to nature and even promote environmentalism in adulthood (Wells & Lekies 2006, Kals et al., 1999). Often, these interventions lack a proper study design and are consequently often poorly evaluated which makes it hard to draw conclusions about their effectiveness. Numerous school interventions aiming to change behaviours and attitudes have been conducted over recent years. Interventions in schools are appealing because if they are effective they provide a method for reaching a large number of children of a specific age. Thus, the majority of studies concerning the effects of such efforts present anecdotal evidence and therefore the possibilities to draw causal conclusions are limited (see e.g. Consequently, many of these interventions are not suitably designed to allow scientific evaluation. Outdoor recreation and led outdoor experiences are often used in different programs aimed at personal development and behaviour change in youth. However, much research in the area has focused on adults and there is a lack of knowledge on what and how environmentally friendly behaviour and attitudes are formed in children (Evans et al., 2007). The increasing focus on environmental problems such as global warming has led to governments across the world encouraging attempts to change attitudes and behaviours among citizens to become more environmentally aware and friendly.
The observed effects of Klassdraget are small but appear to be larger for girls, who are traditionally less interested in recreational fishing when compared with boys. Our findings also reveal a low correlation between frequency of nature visits and self-reported interest in nature. Knowledge about nature and possibly also environmental awareness are positively affected and these effects can be traced as long as three years after the intervention.
We found the intervention to have no effect on the frequency of fishing, interest in fishing more, or number of visits in nature during spare time. Our results suggest a weak positive association between exposure to natural environments in a recreational fishing context and interest in nature and recreational fishing. In this study we have investigated the effectiveness of a one day school-based intervention with recreational fishing (in Swedish called Klassdraget) in increasing environmental awareness, interest in nature and recreational fishing in pupils aged between 8 and 12.
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