Unraveling the longitudinal relationships between connectedness to nature, depressive symptoms, and learning burnout in adolescents.

INTRODUCTION: Following the conservation of resource theory and natural stress reduction theory, the current study investigated mediated pathways, reverse mediated pathways, and reciprocal pathways between connectedness to nature, depressive symptoms, and adolescent learning burnout via a half-longitudinal analysis, and discussed gender differences in the three models.

METHODS: Two waves of data were collected in December 2022 (T1) and June 2023 (T2) for this study. The sample consisted of 1092 Chinese adolescents (52.20% girls, Mage  = 13.03, SD = 1.43). Semi-longitudinal analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between connectedness to nature, depressive symptoms, and adolescent academic burnout.

RESULTS: The results indicated that connectedness to nature can serve as a positive resource to alleviate the levels of depressive symptoms among adolescents and thereby decrease learning burnout. However, the protective effect of connectedness to nature was smaller, and the decreasing effect of learning burnout on connectedness to nature was stronger than the alleviating effect of connectedness to nature on learning burnout. Additionally, the study found that depressive symptoms and academic burnout have a mutually reinforcing effect over time and that the effects of this interaction are more pronounced in females.

CONCLUSIONS: The present study emphasizes the protective role of nature connectedness and the detrimental effects of learning burnout in adolescents.