Speaking of nature: Relationships between how people think about, connect with, and act to protect nature

Abstract

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.

Contribution of nature conservation related citizen science projects to learning, attitude and behavioral change of participants

“…Promoting methodologies that involve participants in contributory experiences and in more than one activity of the research process might help to increase science-related impacts. How people perceive, enjoy, feel, understand and describe nature, can influence attitude changes which can encourage positive behaviors toward nature conservation (Peter et al 2019, Hatty et al 2022. When participants of the analyzed NCCS projects reported emotions (e.g.…”

Online, Experiential Sustainability Education Can Improve Students’ Self-Reported Environmental Attitudes, Behaviours and Wellbeing

“…Decades of research into the benefits of connecting with nature have revealed it to have positive outcomes for both individual wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][50][51][52][53][54]. The unit therefore aims to stimulate the three aspects of nature connection through learning about biodiversity and wildlife (cognitive) and providing students with experiences (experiential) and a deeper understanding of their local environment (emotional connection to place).…”

“…However, there are also strong relationships between nature connection and mental health and wellbeing [28,29,50,52,58]. For example, greater time in nature is associated with improved mental and physical health and social connection [28].…”