Loving Amazonian nature? Extending the study of psychological nature connection to rural areas in the Global South.

Abstract

There is growing recognition that environmental management decisions taken by key conservation stakeholders such as farmers are underpinned by both economic and psycho-social factors. However, conservation psychology is still in infancy and there are few validated tools suitable for measuring psycho-social constructs in the Global South. Subjective connection with nature (CWN) is considered to be the basis for pro-conservation attitudes and behaviours but has so far received only scant attention from research into farmers’ decision-making. Here, we introduce a new scale of affective CWN tailored for use in rural areas of the Global South and provide the first field assessment of cognitive and affective CWN in the rural tropics. Our survey found high levels of CWN among non-indigenous farmers living at a major Amazonian deforestation frontier in Brazil. This suggests that CWN has the potential to positively influence farmers’ environmental views and decisions. We also highlight the importance of understanding what kind of “nature” people feel most connected to when responding to CWN measures.

Who knows, who cares? Untangling ecological knowledge and nature connection among Amazonian colonist farmers

“…Nature connection levels for this sample, as measured with the INS and LCNR scales, were originally described in Mikołajczak et al. (2019). The distributions of nature connection measures showed a strong tendency towards high values in both scales, which was particularly pronounced in LCNR (Table 2; Figure 5), suggesting the possibility of a ceiling effect in the LCNR scores.…”

“…Sampling was stratified to capture variation in local forest cover and distances from the sub‐regional urban centre Altamira (Table 2). In all, 45 sampling points were selected along 15 side‐roads running perpendicular to the highway (details in Mikołajczak et al., 2019). Six points were abandoned due to accessibility issues or apparent lack of inhabitants.…”

“…Nature connection was scored by two independent methods. The cognitive nature connection (the extent to which one believes themselves to be part of nature) was measured with the Inclusion of Nature in Self scale (INS; Schultz, 2002) and the affective nature connection was measured using the Love and Care for Nature—Rural (LCNR) scale (Mikołajczak et al., 2019). The Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) is a single‐item graphic instrument depicting seven Venn‐diagrams of two progressively overlapping circles representing ‘self’ and ‘nature’.…”

“…’ The ‘Love and Care for Nature—Rural’ is a 5‐item Likert‐like scale, with responses measured from 1 = ‘Completely disagree’ to 5 = ‘Completely Agree’, aimed to capture feelings of love, caring, awe, and psychological well‐being derived from nature. The same dataset on LCNR and INS scores that is used here has been previously used to validate these measures in our study area (Mikołajczak et al., 2019).…”

“…Nature connection was scored by two independent methods. The cognitive nature connection (the extent to which one believes themselves to be part of nature) was measured with the Inclusion of Nature in Self scale (INS; Schultz, 2002) and the affective nature connection was measured using the Love and Care for Nature-Rural (LCNR) scale (Mikołajczak et al, 2019 scores that is used here has been previously used to validate these measures in our study area (Mikołajczak et al, 2019).…”