TY - JOUR
T1 - Speaking of nature
T2 - relationships between how people think about, connect with, and act to protect nature
AU - Hatty, Melissa
AU - Goodwin, Denise
AU - Smith, Liam
AU - Mavondo, Felix
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was commissioned and funded by the Victorian Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP). This research was also funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. Thank you to Kim Lowe, Fern Hames, and the DELWP Victorians Value Nature team for their input into this research. Thank you also to two anonymous reviewers whose feedback improved the clarity and presentation of this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Human relationships with nature are increasingly being recognized as an important factor in environmental conservation. Understanding how people perceive and know nature, and the language they use to describe nature, their concepts of nature, could have important implications for conservation policy and management. This empirical research sought to examine and categorize concepts of nature, and explore how such thoughts relate to connection with nature and conservation behaviors. Multidimensional scaling revealed three concepts of nature categories: descriptive (e.g., plants, animals, landscapes), normative (e.g., conservation, balance, life), and experiential (e.g., activities in nature, positive emotions, aesthetic qualities), plus a complex category (two or more of the descriptive, normative, or experiential categories). Connection with nature scores (total and dimensions) were higher among participants who described nature in experiential or complex terms than those who described nature in descriptive terms. Participants who described nature in experiential terms were more likely to have participated in environmental volunteering, citizen science, picking up litter, and community gardening in the past year than those who used descriptive terms. Concepts of nature moderated the relationship between the connection with nature and picking up litter. These results may usefully inform conservation policies and campaigns intended to increase connection with nature and participation in conservation behaviors, through the use of language emphasizing experiential and more complex concepts of nature, by encouraging personal reflection on one's experiences of nature, and through the design of natural spaces that encourage active engagement with nature.
AB - Human relationships with nature are increasingly being recognized as an important factor in environmental conservation. Understanding how people perceive and know nature, and the language they use to describe nature, their concepts of nature, could have important implications for conservation policy and management. This empirical research sought to examine and categorize concepts of nature, and explore how such thoughts relate to connection with nature and conservation behaviors. Multidimensional scaling revealed three concepts of nature categories: descriptive (e.g., plants, animals, landscapes), normative (e.g., conservation, balance, life), and experiential (e.g., activities in nature, positive emotions, aesthetic qualities), plus a complex category (two or more of the descriptive, normative, or experiential categories). Connection with nature scores (total and dimensions) were higher among participants who described nature in experiential or complex terms than those who described nature in descriptive terms. Participants who described nature in experiential terms were more likely to have participated in environmental volunteering, citizen science, picking up litter, and community gardening in the past year than those who used descriptive terms. Concepts of nature moderated the relationship between the connection with nature and picking up litter. These results may usefully inform conservation policies and campaigns intended to increase connection with nature and participation in conservation behaviors, through the use of language emphasizing experiential and more complex concepts of nature, by encouraging personal reflection on one's experiences of nature, and through the design of natural spaces that encourage active engagement with nature.
KW - Concepts of nature
KW - connection with nature
KW - conservation behavior
KW - conservation psychology
KW - human-nature relationships
KW - thoughts about nature
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85136282741&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5751/ES-13369-270317
DO - 10.5751/ES-13369-270317
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85136282741
SN - 1708-3087
VL - 27
JO - Ecology and Society
JF - Ecology and Society
IS - 3
M1 - 17
ER -