Water Woes: The effects of children’s science media on conservation knowledge, self-efficacy, and environmental worry

Encouraging individuals, especially children, to decrease their use of natural resources is critical to creating sustainable communities. We thus investigated whether children can 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 did not learn more about conservation strategies compared to the control episode, but they did become more worried about the environment. These findings suggest that exposure to nature-related educational media increases children’s concern for the environment but has minimal effects on their learning.