Orientations toward ‘people’ and ‘things’ are associated with nature connectedness in a representative sample of the French adult population

Abstract

Identifying the determinants of people's connection with nature is crucial for the future of nature conservation. The sense of connection with nature may be defined as how one relates to the natural world or sees oneself as part of it. A part of this connection is related to what is called "Environmental Identity", which begins to form early in life under the influence of experiences with nature. Differentiated traits of appreciation of one's "environments"-defined as the things, places, and people surrounding individuals throughout their lifetime-have been described in psychological studies on personality. Theorized as "General Orientations," these consist of specific forms of selectivity in individuals' attention, which differs from their values and encourages them to respond to certain stimuli in a specific way. The literature describes two general orientations, namely toward the social environment or "people" (PO) and toward the physical environment or "things" (TO). Despite the potential contributions of PO and TO for the study of nature connectedness, few attempts have been made to explore how these dimensions interrelate. Here, we analyzed survey responses from the ELIPSS panel, a representative sample of the French adult metropolitan population (N = 1788), to test the hypothesis that General Orientations, especially PO, as a personality-like trait are related to higher EID. We found that PO and TO were positively correlated with EID (strongly and moderately, respectively), and appeared to mediate the association between gender and EID. These findings raise the question as to whether General Orientations correspond to different ways of building connections with nature.

Nature's path to thinking about others and the surrounding environment

“…For instance, conscious feelings of connection to others may mediate the occurrence of pro-social behavior that has been observed after exposure to natural environments. Given that nature connectedness is associated with proenvironmental behaviors (Geng et al, 2015), having access and opportunity to visit safe, urban greenspace may be helpful for environmental conservation efforts (Maurice et al, 2021), which is of consequence given issues like climate change.…”