Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature

By P. Nayar. 2005

503 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Review: Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature By Susan Clayton and Susan Opotow (Eds.) Reviewed by Pramod K. Nayar University of Hyderabad, India Susan Clayton and Susan Opotow (Eds.). Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 2003. 353 pp. ISBN 0-262-53206-9 (pbk) US $ 29.00 The Clayton-Opotow volume is a useful primer on identity and the environment. Since both "identity" and "nature" are slippery terms, the introduction sets out their parameters. Personal identity emerges in a social context that includes interpersonal and group memberships. Thus identity has a cultural and social aspect. The experience of nature is rooted in a social and cultural experience. Environmental identity can be conceptualized as occurring along a continuum. Identity and the Natural Environment is divided into sections based on the degree of social influence on environmental identity, ranging from the minimal to the strong. Steven J. Holmes in the opening essay surveys the available literature/theories on identity and the natural environment. The first section of the book deals with a minimal degree of social influence, and is therefore titled "Experiencing Nature as Individuals." Susan Clayton's essay defines environmental identity as a meaningful source of self-definition. Her research findings demonstrate conclusively that environmental identity relates to values, attitudes and behaviors. Gene Myers and Ann Russell examine the human-natural interactions that produce an environmental identity. Ulrich Gebhard et al analyze how children use human identity to construct an anthropomorphic identity for natural objects. They demonstrate how such a construction of identity - interpreting human identity in terms of nature or natural objects, what they term "physiomorphism" (as opposed to "anthropomorphism") - enables children to develop a form of empathy with nature. Peter Kahn, Jr. comes to a similar conclusion in his research on children and the environment, arguing that children use either anthropocentric or biocentric ways to think about the non-human environment. He suggests that environmental identity must be talked about in terms of both multiplicity and unity. Elisabeth Kals and Heidi Ittner also focus on children, specifically their motives for nature-protective behavior. They conclude that nature-protective behavior in children stems from a combination of emotional attachment to nature and moral concern about threats to nature. In Section II of the book, the essays deal with moderate social influence on environmental identity. Focusing on social and community contexts, the essays in this section research the concerns about environmental justice constructed at local levels. Linda Kalof looks at the ways in which humans think about animals, locating such attitudes within the matrix of race and ethnicity. …

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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Citations in the corpus

The Malicious Effects of Existential Threat on Motivation to Protect the Natural Environment and the Role of Environmental Identity as a Moderator (2012, methodology): “Clayton (2003) defined environmental identity as “a sense of connection to some part of the nonhuman natural environment” (p. 45) resulting from positive interactions with nature and the inclusion of nature in the definition of the self.”
The architecture of children’s relationships with nature: a phenomenographic investigation seen through drawings and written narratives of elementary students (2012, background): “…place (Korpela 2002; Moore 1986; Pyle 2002; R. Hart 1979; Sobel 1998, 2002), play (Fjortoft 2001), identity development (Clayton and Opotow 2004; Gebhard, Nervers, and Billmann-Mahecha 2003; Kals and Ittner 2003), autobiographies of childhood (Chawla 1994, 2002), role of age (Kellert 2002),…”
Personally Relevant Climate Change (2013, background): “Place attachment is also associated with more self-reported proenvironmental behaviors (e.g., Clayton, 2003; Scannell & Gifford, 2010b; Vaske & Kobrin, 2001).”
I Am What I Am, by Looking Past the Present (2012, background): “It prescribes a course of action that is compatible with a sense of who you are, and as such promotes proenvironmental actions (cf. Clayton & Opotow, 2003).”
Dimensionality of the New Ecological Paradigm (2012, background): “…concern, including how such concerns are structured within individual belief systems (Xiao & Dunlap, 2007), and have developed measures assessing the extent to which individuals personally value and identify with aspects of the natural environment (Clayton & Opotow, 2003; Schultz, 2002).”
Nordic in nature: friluftsliv and environmental connectedness (2013, background): “Clayton (2003) emphasizes the importance of the cultural component of one’s environmental identity and frames an environmental identity as, in part, a social identity.”
Collective guilt mediates the effect of beliefs about global warming on willingness to engage in mitigation behavior (2010, background): “For instance, many have suggested that group identification (with nature, humans, political groups, and others) affects both beliefs about global warming and willingness to engage in mitigation (American Psychological Association, 2009; Clayton & Opotow, 2003).”
The interplay among environmental attitudes, pro-environmental behavior, social identity, and pro-environmental institutional climate. A longitudinal study (2017, background): “Clayton (2003, 45) defined environmental identity as ‘a sense of connection to some part of the nonhuman natural environment, based on history, emotional attachments, and/or similarity, that affects the ways in which we perceive and act toward the world.’”
The NR-6: a new brief measure of nature relatedness (2013, background): “ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE published: 01 November 2013 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00813 The NR-6: a new brief measure of nature relatedness”
Environmental cognitions, land change, and social–ecological feedbacks: an overview (2013, background): “The ‘environmental identity’ has also been proposed as a way to synthesize and measure ‘the extent to which the natural environment plays an important part in a person’s 352 P. Meyfroidt self-definition’ (Clayton and Opotow 2003, p. 52).”
Promoting connectedness with nature through environmental education (2013, background): “…with other connection with nature instruments (e.g. Disposition to Connect with Nature: Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2010; Environmental Identity: Clayton 2003; Commitment to Environment: Davis, Green, and Reed 2009; Connectedness to Nature: Mayer and McPherson Frantz 2004) and does not confound…”
A Competence Model for Environmental Education (2014, background): “Clayton (2003) and Schultz (2002a), for example, expect that the extent to which nature is important to a person (i.e., nature is indispensable to a person’s self-concept) and how one sees himself or herself (i.e., when a person holds an environmental identity) are vital.”
Mindfulness, Pro-environmental Behavior, and Belief in Climate Change: The Mediating Role of Social Dominance (2018, background): “…suggest a plausible link between SDO, trait mindfulness, and proenvironmental behavior in light of the robust evidence linking environmentally inclusive self-identity patterns to conservation behavior (e.g., Clayton & Opotow, 2003; Van der Werff, Steg, & Keizer, 2014; Whitmarsh & O’Neill, 2010).”
The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness: a meta-analysis (2014, background): “…et al., 2009), connectedness to nature (Mayer and Frantz, 2004), connectivity with nature (Dutcher et al., 2007), emotional affinity toward nature (Kals et al., 1999), environmental identity (Clayton, 2003), inclusion of nature in self (Schultz, 2001), and nature relatedness (Nisbet et al., 2009).”
Theory of planned behaviour: predicting tourists’ pro-environmental intentions after a humpback whale encounter (2019, background): “Environmental Identity Scale The Environmental Identity Scale (EID; Clayton & Opotow, 2003) measured participants’ relationship with nature and comprises 24 items across four subscales.”
Nature-based environmental education of children: Environmental knowledge and connectedness to nature, together, are related to ecological behaviour (2017, background): “Unlike other measures of connectedness to nature, such as the Connectedness to Nature Scale (Mayer and Frantz, 2004), or the Environmental Identity Scale (Clayton, 2003), which rely on the individual to answer abstract items regarding their relationship to nature, the DCN assesses specific bonding b”
Connecting students to nature – how intensity of nature experience and student age influence the success of outdoor education programs (2017, background): “…many authors underline the emotional base when defining the concept of nature connectedness (Mayer and Frantz 2004; Müller, Kals, and Pansa 2009; Nisbet, Zelenski, and Murphy 2009; raudsepp 2005) another approach focuses on the role of the natural environment in a person`s identity (Clayton 2003).”
‘Love honey, hate honey bees’: reviving biophilia of elementary school students through environmental education program (2018, background): “It is the human-nature relationship which is related to the development of affective domain (Clayton and Opotow 2003).”