Neighbourhood characteristics affect environmental literacy in urban youth

Urban youth are exposed to a myriad of conditions that influence environmental literacy in their informal learning settings. Here, we investigated how place dependency, place identity, research competencies, empathy for wildlife, ecological knowledge – all components of environmental literacy using stepwise regression were influenced by social and environmental neighbourhood characteristics in youth residing in the Detroit metropolitan area. While distance to park, road density, and impervious surface affected environmental literacy, social variables such as education attainment and housing burden were most important. Because environmental literacy is crucial to growing advocacy and promoting pro-environmental behaviour understanding drivers that influence attitudes towards nature has ramifications for securing both an inclusive STEM workforce and sustainable future.