Racial and ethnic differences in connectedness to nature and landscape preferences among college students

Abstract

An extensive body of environmental psychology, outdoor recreation, and landscape preference research reports that blacks are alienated from nature, fearful of it, and prefer urbanized and developed landscapes to wild or natural environments. But, are these responses and preferences as widespread as reported? Most of the studies in these genres focus on black-white differences. This article provides a more complex analysis by incorporating an environmental justice framework in the assessment of the ways in which blacks, whites, and other minority college students reflect on and think about nature. It also examines how they perceive their connectedness to nature, their curiosity about nature, and their landscape preferences. The participants are students taking part in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programming at a large public midwestern university, a mid-sized private university in the mid-Atlantic region, and a small historically black university in the deep south. The sample of 157 participants contains 46 whites, 43 blacks, and 68 other minorities. None of the respondents say they are disconnected from nature. Most say that, first and foremost, they think about trees, forests, and plants when they think of nature. The study found that black students prefer naturalistic landscapes more than urbanized settings and their perceptions of nature and landscapes mirror that of students of other racial and ethnic groups. None of the study respondents reported a generalized fear of nature either. Instead, students expressed situational fear, object-specific dislike, and simultaneous contradictions when viewing landscape images.