Water Woes: The Effects of Children's Science Media on Conservation Knowledge, Self-Efficacy, and Environmental Worry in the United States of America

Encouraging individuals, especially children, to decrease their use of natural resources is critical to creating sustainable communities. We thus investigated whether children could learn conservation strategies from an educational TV show. We measured 4- and-5-year-olds' (N = 110) knowledge, self-efficacy, and environmental worry before and after showing them an episode of the PBS show Nature Cat that either did or did not teach about water conservation. Children who watched the episode about water conservation demonstrated improved only marginally in their understanding of water conservation strategies compared to the control group, but they did become significantly more worried about the environment. These findings suggest that exposure to nature-related educational media has the potential to improve children's understanding of environmentalism and increase children's concern for the environment. Based on these findings, we suggest ways to increase the impact of environmental educational media.