Underestimating Nearby Nature

Nisbet, Elizabeth K.; Zelenski, John M.

doi:10.1177/0956797611418527

Cited by 310 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Especially because extrinsic rewards, such as economic incentives, are often costly, may backfire, and are difficult to implement and maintain 7,18 . Moreover, the results presented here may be conservative, as other work suggests that people frequently underestimate how much they enjoy engaging with the environment 19 . In short, the norm of pure 'self-interest' often portrays a misleading picture of human nature.…”

Section: Warm Glow Is Associated With Low-but Not High-cost Sustainabmentioning

confidence: 50%

Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-cost sustainable behaviour

Linden

2018

Nat Sustain

101

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Why do people contribute to important societal causes, such as sustainability? This study hypothesized that people are motivated to help because they anticipate a sense of warm glow from acting green. Although results reveal that 'feelgood' affect mostly drives low-rather than high-cost behaviour changes, harnessing people's intrinsic motivation to help the environment may be an underleveraged mechanism for promoting sustainability.Although the study of why people contribute-or fail to contribute-to important societal causes has captured the attention of behavioural science for many decades 1 , the motivational foundations of cooperative behaviour seem especially relevant in the face of what is perhaps the biggest social dilemma of our time: ensuring a sustainable future for our planet 2,3 . While the psychological factors that motivate sustainable behaviour have shown to be diverse 4 , one important observation is that humans are often intrinsically motivated to contribute to societal causes because people derive a sense of 'warm glow' from helping others 5 .Yet, the 'half-life' of empathy-driven prosocial behaviourwhether it concerns raising support for debilitating diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, conserving energy or humanitarian responses to conflict-tends to be short-lived 6-8 . This is problematic when it comes to issues that require long-term support and cooperation from people, such as sustainability. Accordingly, solutions that leverage people's 'intrinsic' motivation to help the environment may sustain behaviour change longer than policy incentives that are contingent on extrinsic rewards 6-8 . Nonetheless, an important prerequisite of this assumption is that people actually experience or anticipate positive 'internal' rewards from acting green. This is a tenuous assumption for several reasons. First, compared to helping other humans in need, sustainability often includes non-human nature and so it is less clear whether people also derive a sense of warm glow from contributing to large-scale and relatively depersonalized collective action problems. To this extent, emerging research suggests that helping the environment does in fact make people feel good about themselves 9-11 . This is also evidenced by the fact that extrinsic incentives, such as financial rewards, often backfire 12 , presumably because they dilute the purity of the prosocial act 13 , which generally makes people feel less positive about their contribution to the environment 14 .Second, prior studies have mostly measured 'experienced' emotions to help the environment retrospectively, often for one particular action at a single point in time and typically using 'good intentions' as a substitute for behaviour. It is therefore unclear to what extent people act sustainably because they anticipate that engaging in morally desirable behaviours will make them feel good about themselves. In other words, to what extent does a sense of anticipated warm glow from acting sustainably actually predict future green behaviour, especiall...

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Section: Warm Glow Is Associated With Low-but Not High-cost Sustainabmentioning

confidence: 50%

Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-cost sustainable behaviour

Linden

2018

Nat Sustain

101

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“…This final item reflects Mayer and Frantz proposition that nature connectedness relates to a greater concern for environmental issues. Nisbet and Zelenski (2011) also note that feeling emotionally connected with nature predicts pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour because greater connectedness to nature is related to our ecological self which encompasses the self and the natural world around us, such that damage to the natural world can be viewed as damage to the self. This is reflected in a second scale developed by Nisbett, Zelenski and Murphy (2009).…”

Section: Nature Connectednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They present the nature relatedness scale which measures internalised connection to nature, worldviews of nature and people's engagement and comfort with nature. The scale indicates the extent to which the biophilia based need for nature connection has been fulfilled or suppressed (Nisbet & Zelenski, 2011). The self subscale contains an affective theme relating to both awareness of and connectedness to nature and being aware of environmental issues.…”

Section: Nature Connectednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the psychological rewards of a familiar semirural landscape: Connecting to local nature through a mindful approach.

Richardson¹,

Hallam²

2013

The Humanistic Psychologist

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This study analyses a 53,000-word diary of a year engaging with nature through over 200 trips to a semirural landscape. Thematic analysis revealed two themes: the transition from observer to nature connectedness and the ways in which the natural environment was experienced once a connection was made. These themes are discussed in relation to theories that seek to explain the positive effect of nature and nature connectedness. The findings are important as they suggest that repeated engagement with local semirural countryside can lead to a mindful approach and psychological rewards that do not require travel into the wilderness. The work informs further research into outcomes and processes of nature-based interventions, such as trip frequency, duration, and diary keeping.

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“…Since nature relatedness has been linked with health and wellbeing, it is considered a psychological asset [134,135]. However, it may also be a planetary health asset because emerging research shows that nature relatedness is positively associated with empathy, pro-environmental attitudes and humanitarianism (and negatively with materialism) [136][137][138].…”

Section: Moving Upstream-the Psyche Of Planetary Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Larger Than Life: Injecting Hope into the Planetary Health Paradigm

Prescott

Logan

2018

Challenges

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Abstract:The term planetary health, popularized in the 1980s and 1990s, was born out of necessity; although the term was used by many diverse groups, it was consistently used to underscore that human health is coupled to the health of natural systems within the Earth's biosphere. The interrelated challenges of climate change, massive biodiversity losses, environmental degradation, grotesque socioeconomic inequalities, conflicts, and a crisis of non-communicable diseases are, mildly stated, daunting. Despite 'doomsday' scenarios, there is plenty of room for hope and optimism in planetary health. All over planet Earth, humans are making efforts at the macro, meso and micro scales to promote the health of civilization with the ingredients of hope-agency and pathway thinking; we propose that planetary health requires a greater commitment to understanding hope at the personal and collective levels. Prioritizing hope as an asset in planetary health necessitates deeper knowledge and discourse concerning the barriers to hope and the ways in which hope and the utopian impulse are corrupted; in particular, it requires examining the ways in which hope is leveraged by advantaged groups and political actors to maintain the status quo, or even promote retrograde visions completely at odds with planetary health. Viewing the Earth as a superorganism, with humans as the collective 'nervous system', may help with an understanding of the ways in which experience and emotions lead to behavioral responses that may, or may not be, in the best interest of planetary health. We argue that the success of planetary health solutions is predicated on a more sophisticated understanding of the psychology of prevention and intervention at all scales.

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Underestimating Nearby Nature

Cited by 310 publications

References 24 publications

Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-cost sustainable behaviour

Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-cost sustainable behaviour

Exploring the psychological rewards of a familiar semirural landscape: Connecting to local nature through a mindful approach.

Larger Than Life: Injecting Hope into the Planetary Health Paradigm

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