How deep is your love – Of nature? A psychological and spatial analysis of the depth of feelings towards Dutch nature areas

Abstract

The most binding nature protection policy in the Netherlands and the EU primarily designates areas based on ecological value, ensuring their sustained protection. Of less concern to these policies are the current and future needs of the average citizen, who is experiencing increases in education, income, and health. This paper argues that although existing policies protect biodiversity needs, the spatialemotional needs of the public are of similarly high importance. We analyze the spatial and emotional characteristics of favorite natural places in the Netherlands selected on the Hotspotsmonitor survey. Content analysis of the open question, "Why is this place important to you?" identified three categories: peace & quiet, explore, and peak. These were mapped using GIS to identify predominant hotspots and compared against the most binding nature protection policy -Natura 2000. The important societal benefits of augmenting ecologically based nature protection policies with emotional valuation are discussed.

Practice of Environmentally Significant Behaviours in Rural China: From Being Motivated by Economic Gains to Being Motivated by Environmental Considerations

“…Young generations were argued to be more concerned with the environment because they were less integrated into the dominant social order that is deemed as the root cause of environmental problems, and are more open to new ideas [30,31,32,33]. Social class, which is generally indicated by education, income, or occupational prestige, was also proved to be positively related to people’s environmental consciousness and behaviours [33] because once the basic physical needs are satisfied, people will ask for a higher quality of life, such as a better environment [34,35,36]. Demographic factors are people’s inherent attributes that are supposed to exert influences on people’s environmentally significant behaviours.…”

Visitors’ place-based evaluations of unacceptable tourism impacts in Oulanka National Park, Finland

“…Many researchers have recently insisted that understanding visitor experiences requires focusing on the attachment and emotional relationship that visitors have towards the places they visit (e.g., Brooks, Wallance, & Williams, 2006;Dvorak, Borrie, & Watson, 2013;Manzo, 2003;Mitchell, Force, Carroll, & McLaughlin, 1993;Williams, Patterson, Roggenbuck, & Watson, 1992). PPGIS studies display promising tools for studying visitor experiences also from these perspectives (e.g., Brown, Raymond, & Corcoran, 2015;Davis, Daams, van Hinsberg, & Sijtsma, 2016;Lowery & Morse, 2013). Similarly, a more qualitative approach to defining recreation settings could better emphasize the variability of how visitors perceive the settings they encounter.…”

Multi-scale mapping of cultural ecosystem services in a socio-ecological landscape: A case study of the international Wadden Sea Region

“…We used only quantitative indicators from the questions with predefined answers and no text analysis of the open answer question on the attractiveness. This was beyond the scope of this paper, but we did calculate the number of words used to describe the attractiveness (for text analyses see Sijtsma et al 2012;Davis et al 2016). The resulting Table 2 has three sections, the upper section indicates results for (n = 1021) Wadden Sea coastal area fans at the national level, the middle section shows results for the (n = 200) world level fans, while the lower part gives results for the locals: the people living in the Wadden Sea coastal area.…”

“…Recent findings from the psychology of landscape and nature experiences strengthen the point that the relation between visiting and developing feelings of place attachment may be far from simple. This literature finds that experiences of strong and deep emotions may occur in varied, wild or remote landscapes bearing very intensive natural values, but such strong emotions also occur only infrequently (Davis et al 2016). These peak experiences may, however, be the ones people cherish most often, and as such define their place attachment strongly (Williams and Harvey 2001;Heintzman 2009).…”