Effects of a 5-day outdoor sports intervention on environmental attitudes in children

The ability of environmental education programs is shown to influence environmental attitudes positively (Kruse and Card, 2004; Johnson and Manoli, 2011). But there is not much about the effect of outdoor sport programs on environmental attitudes. The present study examines the impact of 5-day extra-curricular outdoor sport interventions on environmental attitudes in 11-14 years old children. Methods: 288 students completed the intervention (male: n=157, 12.1±1.2 years; female: n=131, 11.9±11 years). To measure students’ environmental attitudes, we administered the “Two-Major-Environmental-Values-Scale” (2-MEV) developed by Bogner and Wiseman (2006). The 2-MEV consists of two higher order factors: utilization and preservation of nature. A pre-, post- and retention-test design was used. For further analyses students were assigned to the type of their secondary school (secondary general school (GEN; n=41), intermediate secondary school (INT; n=20), comprehensive school (COM; n=31), grammar school (GRAM; n=196)) and the population of the town where the school is situated (POP+: >100.000 (n=107), POP-: <100.000 (n=181)). Results: Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed a positive short-term effect for the overall group for the factor utilization (pre: 2.26 ± 0.73, post: 2.13 ± 0.75; p=0.000). Further comparisons showed a positive effect on utilization (pre: 2.42 ± 0.82, post: 2.22 ± 0.84; p=0.000) and preservation (pre: 3.11 ± 0.79, post: 3.23 ± 0.77; p=0.018) scores for POP+, but only on utilization for POP-(pre: 2.16 ± 0.65, post: 2.08 ± 0.68; p=0.003). Additionally there was a positive increase also for the factor preservation in GEN students (pre: 2.86 ± 0.89, post: 3.10 ± 0.89; p=0.010), whereas there were no program-induced changes for INT or COM. No persistence of changes in environmental attitudes could be found. Discussion: The 5-day extra-curricular outdoor sports programs affected students’ environmental attitudes positively. The outdoor sports interventions showed similar effects compared to environmental education interventions (Sellmann and Bogner, 2013). Interventions seem to be most effective for children from urban areas and for secondary general school students representing a lower level of education. However, the improvement did not persist after the program. Consequently, a program design focusing even more on a combination of outdoor sports and education for sustainable development may support a long-term outcome.