From warrior to guardian: An autoethnographic study of how consumers think about and interact with the natural world

Abstract

Consumers are increasingly concerned about how their interactions with the natural world affect both the health of that environment, and their own well‐being and enjoyment of life. More aware consumers seek to make sense of the natural world around them and consider how their consumer behavior impacts this environment. How actors notice and bracket ecologically material cues from a stream of experience and build connections and causal networks between these has been referred to as ecological sensemaking. This research examines ecological sensemaking in a specific context, that being in the experience of catch‐and‐release fishing. Data were gathered through a process of autoethnographic inquiry obtained over the course of four fishing trips. The results reflect the process of ecological sensemaking pertaining to the experience. Through the findings, we propose a new concept, ecological reasoning, which seeks to provide a critical link between ecological sensemaking and ecological embeddedness. Using this new concept, the research contributes to extant understanding of how consumers think about and interact with the natural world. Apart from constructing an overarching narrative of the experience, four subnarratives are also identified, in a chronological sequence that comprises the entire experience of catch‐and‐release fishing. The findings have implications for the broader management and marketing disciplines seeking to establish better ways of interacting with the natural world, both for themselves and their consumers.