Effects of School Gardening Activities on Elementary School Students' Emotional Well-being: The Mediating Effect of Nature Connectedness and the Moderating Effect of Expectations
Article information
Abstract
Background and objective
As concerns regarding children’s emotional well-being grow, school-based nature experiences have gained attention as potential supportive interventions. This study examined whether participation in a school gardening program enhances elementary school students’ nature connectedness and emotional well-being. Specifically, it investigated whether satisfaction with the gardening experience indirectly influences emotional well-being through nature connectedness, and whether prior expectations moderate this indirect pathway.
Methods
A single-group pretest-posttest design was employed with 124 third- and fourth-grade elementary school students. Measures included nature connectedness, emotional well-being, pre-program expectations, and post-program satisfaction. Changes before and after the program were analyzed using paired t-tests. Moderated mediation analyses were conducted using the PROCESS Macro (Model 7) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples, while controlling for baseline levels of nature connectedness and emotional well-being.
Results
Both nature connectedness and emotional well-being significantly increased following participation in the program. Post-program satisfaction was significantly higher than pre-program expectations. Satisfaction positively predicted nature connectedness, which in turn significantly predicted emotional well-being. Bootstrap analyses revealed that the indirect effect of satisfaction on emotional well-being mediated by nature connectedness was significant at low, mean, and high levels of expectation. However, the index of moderated mediation was not significant, suggesting that prior expectations did not significantly moderate the indirect pathway.
Conclusion
The findings indicate that a school gardening program enhances children’s emotional well-being primarily by strengthening psychological connectedness to nature. The emotional benefits derived from participation appear to depend more on the quality of satisfaction experienced during the program than on prior expectations. Therefore, school-based gardening programs may serve as meaningful environmental resources that support children’s socio-emotional development within everyday educational settings.
Introduction
Recently, the emotional well-being and mental health of children and adolescents have become central priorities in school education. Schools constitute the primary environments in which children spend most of their daily lives, while being exposed to diverse psychosocial factors such as academic pressure, peer relationships, and teacher-student interactions (Min, 2014; Roeser et al., 2000). Previous studies have demonstrated that the school environment is closely associated with students’ emotional stability, school adjustment, and academic engagement (He et al., 2023; Wang and Degol, 2016). Accordingly, there has been a continuous emphasis on the need for mental health support from a universal prevention perspective (Fazel et al., 2014; Weare and Nind, 2011).
Schools must place substantial emphasis on children’s emotions because emotional difficulties extend beyond individual psychological problems and exert cascading effects on learning and overall school life. Children’s emotional states directly influence not only academic achievement but also interpersonal relationships, and school-based emotional support programs have consistently demonstrated positive effects across emotional, behavioral, and academic domains (Durlak et al., 2011; Greenberg et al., 2003). These findings suggest that emotional support in schools is not merely a supplementary welfare service, but rather a fundamental educational foundation that supports students’ overall learning and development.
Within this context, nature experiences have received increasing attention as environmental factors that facilitate emotional restoration and stress reduction. Exposure to natural environments enhances positive affect (McMahan and Estes, 2015), and contributes to stress recovery and psychological stability (Ulrich et al., 1991). In particular, nature-based activities such as gardening have been shown to alleviate stress and improve emotional well-being (Kim et al., 2024), while also being significantly associated with overall psychological stability (Hartig et al., 2014; Kaplan, 1995; Lee et al., 2021; White et al., 2019). As opportunities for children to experience nature continue to decline due to urbanization (Chawla, 2015; Soga and Gaston, 2016), green spaces within schools have emerged as important resources that enable regular contact with nature in everyday life (Bikomeye et al., 2021; Dyment and Bell, 2007). In particular, school gardening programs are distinguished from passive forms of nature exposure by involving active engagement, including cultivating, nurturing, observing, and harvesting plants (Blair, 2009; Richardson and McEwan, 2018). These multisensory experiences promote emotional well-being and function as psychological intervention mechanisms that strengthen individuals’ connection to nature (Kim et al., 2025; Van Den Berg et al., 2010; Whiteley et al., 2024).
Despite these benefits, previous research on school gardening has primarily focused on outcomes related to nutrition, physical activity, and learning (Ohly et al., 2016; Williams and Dixon, 2013), thereby providing limited insight into the psychological mechanisms underlying improvements in emotional well-being (Skelly and Bradley, 2007; Wells et al., 2014). Accordingly, this study focuses on “connectedness to nature” (or nature connectedness) as a key pathway through which gardening translates into emotional well-being. Connectedness to nature refers to the extent to which individuals perceive nature as being psychologically connected to themselves (Schultz, 2002), which forms an important foundation for positive affect and happiness (Mayer and Frantz, 2004; Nisbet et al., 2011).
Previous studies have reported that direct contact with nature enhances connectedness to nature, and that this psychological bond serves as an important pathway leading to emotional restoration and life satisfaction (Mayer et al., 2009; Nisbet and Zelenski, 2013). Furthermore, nature-based activities influence emotional well-being through the mediation of nature connectedness, which serves as a vital bridge between nature experiences and emotional outcomes (Capaldi et al., 2014; Pritchard et al., 2020). Thus, accumulated experiential interactions with nature through gardening may strengthen familiarity with and emotional attachment to nature, ultimately increasing positive affect and enhancing daily emotional vitality. In other words, connectedness to nature can be understood as a pivotal mediating mechanism that translates the behavioral experience of gardening into emotional well-being, and empirically examining this psychological pathway remains an important research task.
Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the effect of elementary school students’ satisfaction with school garden activities on their emotional well-being with nature connectedness serving as a mediator. In doing so, the study also investigated the moderating effect of prior expectations to elucidate the psychological effects of school-based garden activities in a structural manner.
Research Methods
Research Design and Participants
To investigate the effects of a school gardening program on children’s nature connectedness and emotional well-being, this study employed a one-group pretest-posttest design. Following prior consultation with “A” Elementary School in Gyeonggi-do, the study was conducted on October 21, 2025, as part of the regular school curriculum. The participants comprised 124 third-and fourth-grade students enrolled at the school. Inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) enrollment in the third or fourth grade, (b) ability to participate in the entire program, and (c) ability to complete self-report on the survey items independently. Given the total number of participants, students were divided into small groups of five, and the program was implemented across two separate sessions. All participants attended the single-session program only once. The program lasted 90 minutes and was conducted in an outdoor school garden. The garden, covering approximately 520 m2, functioned as an educational space within the students’ everyday school environment where they could directly engage with natural elements.
The study procedure followed a “pre-survey, program implementation, and post-survey” sequence. Prior to the program, participants completed a pre-survey covering demographic characteristics, including gender and age, as well as the principal study variables. Immediately after completion of the activities, a post-survey using the same measurement instruments was administered. Before the activities began, the purpose and procedures of the program were explained in detail. During the activities, students were encouraged to voluntarily participate and engage with nature through multisensory experiences. The program was jointly supervised by the researchers and homeroom teachers, who maintained continuous observation throughout to ensure participant safety. No physical or emotional adverse events or safety incidents were reported throughout the study period.
This study was conducted in accordance with ethical standards for research involving human participants, and participation was entirely voluntary. Detailed information regarding the study purpose and procedures was provided in advance to both students and their guardians through the school and homeroom teachers. However, since this study applied a one-group pretest-posttest design without a control group for comparison, caution is warranted in making causal interpretations of the findings (Kim et al., 2020). In addition, because the intervention consisted of a single-session gardening activity, the long-term sustain-ability of the observed effects could not be determined (Park et al., 2016).
School Garden-Based Experiential Program
The school gardening program implemented in this study was a nature-based experiential activity designed in consideration of the developmental level of elementary school students. The program was structured to provide progressive opportunities for interaction with nature, drawing upon the pathways to nature connectedness proposed by Lumber et al. (2017) and referencing previous studies on nature connectedness programs for children (Holloway et al., 2023; Kong and Chen, 2024).
Lumber et al. (2017) proposed that nature connectedness develops not merely through exposure to nature, but through multidimensional experiential pathways, including sensory contact, emotion, meaning, compassion, and appreciation of beauty. Reflecting this theoretical framework, the present program was designed to integrate understanding of plant life cycles, repeated contact with nature, sensory-based experiences, caregiving activities, and reflective practices. Specifically, participants developed cognitive understanding of nature through seed sowing and observation of early plant growth stages. Experiences of responsibility and emotional attachment were fostered through caring for plants, while direct interaction with nature was enhanced through sensory engagement. In addition, reflective and sharing activities were incorporated following the gardening experiences to facilitate personal meaning-making and emotional awareness (Table 1).
Structure of the gardening activity program
Meanwhile, as the program was conducted during the autumn season in October, it focused on autumn flowering plants, such as chrysanthemums, and leafy vegetables, including lettuce and arugula, which have relatively short growth cycles and allow observable developmental changes within a limited period. Some plants were experienced through direct sowing and planting activities, whereas pre-existing plants in the garden were used for fruit observation activities.
Measurement Instruments
To evaluate the effects of the nature-based experiences provided through the school gardening program, this study defined nature connectedness, emotional well-being, pre-activity expectations, and post-activity satisfaction as key evaluative variables. Surveys were administered before and after participation in the program. The pre-survey measured nature connectedness, emotional well-being, and expectations regarding the activity. The post-survey employed the identical items for nature connectedness and emotional well-being to assess changes over time, while additionally measuring satisfaction with the activity. All items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). Instructions for completing the questionnaire were provided both in written form and verbally by the researchers, and additional explanations were offered when participants experienced difficulty understanding specific items.
Nature Connectedness
Nature connectedness was assessed using five items measuring interest in natural elements, perceived value of nature, sense of connectedness, environmental conservation awareness, and caregiving intentions. All items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale, with higher scores indicating more positive attitudes toward nature. The items were adapted from attitude assessment scales used in prior studies examining nature and environmental experiences among elementary school students (Cheng and Monroe, 2012; Richardson et al., 2019; Sobko et al., 2018). Internal consistency of attitudes toward nature was examined using Cronbach’s α, which yielded a value of 0.815, indicating acceptable reliability.
Emotional Well-Being
Participants’ emotional well-being was assessed using five items reflecting positive affect and everyday emotional vitality, including joy, vitality, confidence, interest/engagement, and happiness. The items were developed based on the conceptual framework of the PANAS-C, a measure of positive affect in children (Laurent et al., 1999). As the study focused on the positive emotional effects of the program, only the positive affect dimension was assessed. The original items were simplified and modified to reflect everyday contexts appropriate to the developmental level of elementary school children. Internal consistency reliability for the emotional well-being scale yielded a Cronbach’s α of 0.701, indicating an acceptable level of reliability.
Pre-Program Expectation and Post-Program Satisfaction
To examine participants’ subjective evaluations of the school gardening program, their levels of pre-program expectation and post-program satisfaction were measured. The instrument was developed with reference to indicators from previous studies investigating satisfaction factors in school horticultural programs (Kook and Kang, 2024; Lee et al., 2020).
Grounded in Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory (Oliver, 1980), the measurement method was designed to enable a comparative analysis of pre-activity expectations and post-activity perceived performance using identical items. The scale consisted of six items: interest, usefulness, environmental awareness, interpersonal relationships, knowledge acquisition, and intention to continue participation. Reliability analysis demonstrated high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s α values of .867 for expectation and .919 for satisfaction (Table 2).
Measurement variables and instruments
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0 and the PROCESS Macro (Version 4.2). First, descriptive statistical analyses were conducted to examine the general characteristics of the participants, and Cronbach’s α coefficients were calculated to assess the reliability of each measurement variable. To evaluate changes before and after participation in the school gardening program, paired-samples t-tests were performed for nature connectedness, emotional well-being, and expectation-satisfaction variables. Pearson correlation analyses were conducted to examine relationships among the major study variables. To test the primary hypothesis of the study, moderated mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS Macro Model 7. Post-program satisfaction was specified as the independent variable, post-program nature connectedness as the mediator, post-program emotional well-being as the dependent variable, and pre-program expectation as the moderator. In the analysis, pre-program nature connectedness and pre-program emotional well-being were included as control variables to control for baseline effects. The statistical significance of the mediation effect was examined using 5,000 bootstrap samples, and the effect was considered significant when the 95% confidence interval did not include zero. The significance level for all statistical tests was set at p < .05.
Results and Discussion
General Characteristics of the Participants
The participants comprised 65 children aged 10 years (52.4%) and 59 children aged 11 years (47.6%). Regarding gender distribution, 63 participants were male (50.8%) and 61 were female (49.2%) (Table 3).
General characteristics of the participants (N = 124)
Pre-Post Differences Following Participation in School Gardening Activities
To examine changes associated with participation in the school gardening program, paired-samples t-tests were conducted to compare pre-and post-test scores for nature connectedness, emotional well-being, and expectation-satisfaction variables. The results indicated that both nature connectedness and emotional well-being significantly increased following participation in the program. In addition, the expectation-satisfaction scores for the gardening activities suggested that participants’ post-program satisfaction was significantly higher than their pre-program expectations (Table 4). These findings suggest that engagement in school-based gardening activities brought about positive changes in participants’ connectedness to nature and emotional well-being.
Pre-post differences in program outcomes (N = 124)
Relationships Among the Main Variables
Pearson’s correlation analyses were conducted to examine the relationships among the key variables included in this study, and the results are presented in Table 5. The variables analyzed included pre-program expectation, post-program satisfaction, post-program nature connectedness, and post-program emotional well-being. The results showed that post-program satisfaction had statistically significant positive correlations with pre-program expectation (r = .604, p = .001), nature connectedness (r = .693, p = .001), and emotional well-being (r = .419, p = .001). In particular, a strong positive correlation was also found between nature connectedness and emotional well-being (r = .407, p = .001), indicating a close relationship between the two variables.
Correlations among the main variables
Mediating Effect of Nature Connectedness
To examine whether satisfaction influenced emotional well-being through the mediating role of nature connectedness, and whether pre-program expectation moderated this mediating pathway, a moderated mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS Model 7. In the analysis, pre-program nature connectedness and pre-program emotional well-being were included as control variables, allowing the relationships among the variables to be estimated after controlling for baseline levels.
The first-stage regression model, in which nature connectedness served as the dependent variable, was statistically significant (R2 = .733, F (5, 118) = 64.63, p = .001), explaining 73.3% of the total variance. Satisfaction had a significant positive effect on post-program nature connectedness (B = 0.472, SE = 0.091, p = .000), whereas expectation had a significant negative effect (B = −0.165, SE = 0.066, p = .013). However, the interaction term between satisfaction and expectation was not statistically significant (B = 0.063, SE = 0.060, p = .301), indicating that expectation did not significantly moderate the relationship between satisfaction and nature connectedness.
The second-stage regression model, with post-program emotional well-being as the dependent variable, was also statistically significant (R2 = .549, F (4, 119) = 36.17, p = .001). Satisfaction had a significant positive effect on post-program emotional well-being (B = 0.293, SE = 0.086, p = .001), and nature connectedness also exerted a significant positive effect on emotional well-being (B = 0.526, SE = 0.116, p = .000). These findings suggest that satisfaction significantly affects emotional well-being through the mediation of nature connectedness.
Bootstrapping analyses based on 5,000 resamples indicated that the 95% confidence intervals for the indirect effects did not include zero at any level of expectation— low (−1 SD), mean, or high (+1 SD)—thereby demonstrating statistically significant indirect effects. In contrast, the confidence interval for the index of moderated mediation included zero (95% CI [−0.030, 0.137]), indicating that differences in indirect effects according to expectation levels were not statistically significant. Overall, the findings suggest that nature connectedness partially mediated the relationship between satisfaction and emotional well-being. However, neither the moderating effect of expectation nor the moderated mediation effect was statistically significant (Table 6, Fig. 1).
Results of moderated mediation analysis
Path model of program satisfaction and emotional well-being.
Conclusion
This study is significant in that it examined the effects of school-based gardening activities on elementary school students’ nature connectedness and emotional well-being using a pretest-posttest design, while also analyzing the structural pathway through which satisfaction influences emotional well-being, as mediated by nature connectedness. The findings demonstrated that both nature connectedness and emotional well-being among elementary school students significantly improved following their participation in gardening activities. These results are consistent with previous studies (Holloway et al., 2023; Ohly et al., 2016), which reported that school garden programs can positively influence children’s health and well-being.
However, whereas previous research has primarily focused on identifying the direct effects of gardening programs, this study distinguishes itself by structurally explaining how gardening activities contribute to emotional well-being through the psychological pathway of nature connectedness. This finding is consistent with prior studies (Gu et al., 2023; Mayer and Frantz, 2004; Nisbet et al., 2011; Zeng et al., 2025) and a recent meta-analysis (Arola et al., 2023), all of which emphasize nature connectedness as a crucial foundation for positive emotions and happiness. That is, this study empirically confirms that the benefits of gardening activities arise not merely from participation itself, but are rather mediated by a psychological connection with nature.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that significant emotional changes were observed in this study despite the program consisting of only a single session. This finding aligns with previous research showing that even brief exposure to natural environments can enhance positive emotions and nature connectedness (Mayer et al., 2009), as well as studies demonstrating that short-term green activities can improve emotional states (Barton and Pretty, 2010; Bettmann et al., 2025; Gungormus and Pérez-Mármol, 2026). These results suggest that nature-based interventions may produce meaningful psychological benefits even without long-term engagement.
Meanwhile, expectation was not found to significantly moderate the relationship between satisfaction and nature connectedness. This suggests that the quality of the experience during the activity itself may play a more important role than participants’ prior expectations. This finding is in line with discussions by Gungormus and Pérez-Mármol (2026) and Holloway et al. (2023), which emphasized the importance of participatory experiences and contextual factors in explaining the effectiveness of school garden programs. Taken together, this study demonstrates that school gardening activities function as more than mere educational programs; they serve as a psychological mechanism that promotes children’s emotional well-being. Notably, by empirically identifying the mediating role of nature connectedness, this study provides an empirical basis to explain the effects of nature-based educational activities more structurally.
Nevertheless, this study has limitations regarding causal inference due to its single-group pretest-posttest design—a persistent challenge frequently noted in nature-based intervention research (Holloway et al., 2023; Ohly et al., 2016). Additionally, as the participants were limited to elementary school students from a specific region, the generalizability of the findings may be constrained. Future research should examine the long-term effects of nature-based experiences through experimental designs incorporating control groups and longitudinal follow-up studies. In addition, more sophisticated analyses considering contextual factors such as activity intensity, level of participation, and environmental characteristics are needed.