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Environmental Sensitivity And Outdoor Recreation Setting Preferences, Tinelle Bustam, Anderson B. Young, Sharon Todd

Research in Outdoor Education

Over the last 30 years, researchers have considered the complexities of "environmental sensitivity," specifically, the factors that cause people to care or be concerned about the environment. Such research emerges from the notion that environmental sensitivity is the first step in a developmental process that leads persons toward environmental literacy or what Chawla (1998) calls a sense of "ownership" and "empowerment" (p. 11) regarding protection of the environment. In this sense, environmental sensitivity becomes the foundation on which environmental educators can build. By exploring the relationship between environmental sensitivity and other variables, environmental educators may be provided with means of …