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Chapter 2 focuses on exploring parents' orientation (i.e., perceptions of the benefits and barriers, and theirpermission for children’s free play in natural settings) towards children's nature play and its affecting factors.
The influential levels of potential factors including parents' childhood nature experience, degree of urbanization,
nature relatedness, and sociodemographic characteristics were compared. Results from an online questionnaire
survey completed by 516 parents in Japan suggest that while parents generally recognize the importance ofchildren's nature play, their concerns related to accidents and strangers hinder their willingness to allow theirchildren to freely play in nature. By conducting an analysis of generalized linear models, our research reveals
that despite childhood nature experience and nature relatedness significantly contributing to parents'
understanding of the benefits of nature play, these factors do not diminish their fear of incidents involving theirchildren. Incident concerns were the main contributors to parental restriction of children’s free play in nature.
On the other hand, actual incident rates have considerably reduced over decades in Japan. Therefore, it implies
that the incident fear of parents and increased restriction by parents is resulted from complex social and culturalenvironments of the modern parents, rather than actual incident rates. These results underscore the need for
identifying effective strategies to mitigate parents' safety concerns, and to encourage them to facilitate
unsupervised nature play for their children, thereby augmenting children’s connection with nature.
Previous studies suggested that children's exposure to nature is influenced by their interest, parental orientation,and the availability of free time and nearby greenspaces. Thus, in chapter 3, I aimed to understand thecomparative importance of parental orientation for their children's frequency of nature play, compared to otherfactors, such as degree of urbanization, availability of time, and children’s time spent on digital entertainments.
Based on the structure equation modeling using data obtained through an online questionnaire survey, the results
indicate that parental orientation is a more significant determinant than the availability of time and space inenhancing children's frequency of visits to greenspaces. Despite recognizing the benefits of nature, parents
prefer taking their children to supervised green spaces over allowing unsupervised play in nature due to theirsafety concerns. This situation has led children to become reliant on their parents for engagement in nature play.
The findings of this chapter reinforce the notion of chapter 2 that to increase children's frequency of visits togreenspaces, it is essential to encourage parents to let their children play unsupervised in nature. In order tounderstand the causes of increased parents’ restriction for children’s nature play in the broader context(including social and cultural backgrounds), I conducted in-depth interviews with parents in the next chapter.
Chapter 4 seeks to comprehend the historical shifts in children’s nature play and the underlying causes forparents’ growing restrictions. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 22 parents of elementary
school students in Japan to gain insight into this phenomenon. Analysis of the interviews revealed that,childhood nature play has undergone significant transformations in five key domains, namely play places,
playtime, play partners, play activities, and freedom. Unlike the spontaneous nature play experienced by parents
during their own childhood, nature play of today’s children has become heavily dependent on parental
supervision regarding these aspects. The increase in parental supervision is not exclusively attributed to theirheightened anxiety regarding children's safety, as triggered by media coverage and warning messages ofincidents involving children. Rather, it is also be attributed to the growing lack of trust within the community,increased unfamiliarity with their natural surroundings, and social pressure that emphasizes parental
responsibility for children's safety. The parental restriction has become increasingly prevalent after historicalevents, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or severe earthquakes, which have necessitated people to remainindoors. This leaves parents in a dilemma where they desire their children to spend more time to play freely innature, but their fear of outside dangers and societal criticism discourage them from doing so. To address thisissue, we proposed the employment of safeguarding personnel in green spaces, which was well-received byparents interviewed in our study. In addition, the findings from this study align with prior research that hasrecommended strategies for promoting child safety (e.g., better street lighting and more pedestrian-friendlyroads) and enhancing community’s support for children free play in nature (e.g., neighborhood watch
campaigns, creating inclusive green spaces for people of all ages). The implementation of these measures will
potentially reduce parents' apprehensions about children’s safety and fear of societal criticism, thereby
enhancing parental willingness to let their children play independently in natural environments.
In Chapter 5, I discuss the main findings of our study, which demonstrate the significant influence of parental
orientation on enhancing children's connection with the natural world, and highlight key factors that shape theirorientation. The chapter presents recommendations aimed at enhancing parental motivation to involve children
in free play in nature. The study also underscored the importance of community-wide support for nature play,which emerged as a potent strategy for boosting parents' willingness to allow their children's free play in nature,
thereby fostering children’s reconnection with nature. Moreover, this chapter highlights certain limitations of theresults, including the way we defined and measured certain concepts when comparing the relative significanceof orientation and opportunity factors, and the potential challenges of applying these findings to a global context.

In addition, the chapter presents recommendations for improving the limitations and expanding the scope of thisresearch.
In conclusion, this study provides both statistical and interview-based evidence of the importance of parental
orientation towards children's nature play and the factors shaping their orientation in Japan. Given the growing
extinction of children's experience in nature worldwide, further studies are urgently needed in other countries,
particularly in developing nations, to identify effective solutions for reconnecting children with nature on a
global level.