Significant Life Experiences and Formative Influences on the Development of Adults’ Environmental Awareness in the UK, Australia and Canada

Abstract

Summary Environmental educators in Australia (n = 82), and Canada (n = 48) wrote autobiographical statements describing the formative influences and significant life experiences (SLE) which led to their concern for the environment. Content analysis identified the influences/experiences mentioned most often, both as single factors, e.g. ‘close family’, and as groups of logically related factors, e.g. ‘people’, a group composed of the factors ‘close family’, ‘older friends'’, ‘friends'’, and ‘having children’. The final lists of single factors were similar but not identical in the two countries, and both differed slightly from the list already derived from a sample of environmental educators in the UK (n = 233). Here we present the single and grouped factors named most often in Australia, then do the same for Canada, and then compare the principal factors in all three nations.