Study Of The Relationship Between Connectedness To Nature And Environmental Behavior

Facing the increasingly severe environmental problems, all the disciplines are actively searching for solutions, among which psychologists are especially interested in environmental attitudes and environmental behaviors. Since1970s, psychologists have realized that environmental problems origin from "maladaptive human behavior", and thus reconnecting human and nature is the fundamental solution to environmental problems. The theory of "connectedness to nature" was put forward as a result. Here,"connectedness to nature" refers to the extent to which people feel connected and belonging to the natural community. The present study views "connectedness to nature" as a kind of environmental attitudes and tries to explore how "connectedness to nature" predicts environmental behaviors.The present thesis first reviewed the researches into the relationship between environmental attitudes and environmental behaviors as well as the investigations about connectedness to nature. Then, according to the literature review and the purpose of the current study-xploring the relationship between connectedness to nature and environmental behaviors, the hypotheses were proposed and the measures were chosen. Finally, with the questionnaires, implicit association test and situational simulated experiment, the present study studied both the explicit and implicit connectedness to nature, both the deliberate and spontaneous environmental behavior. the environmental concern, and the socially desirable responding of116postgraduate subjects.Traditional studies of environmental attitudes often limit to such direct environmental attitudes as "environmental concern", while neglect such indirect environmental attitudes as "connectedness to nature". On the contrary, the present study clearly points out that "connectedness to nature" is a kind of environmental attitudes. In addition, in the past, researchers often only applied explicit and direct measures to study environmental attitudes, which might distort results due to socially desirable responding bias, while the present study supplements implicit and indirect measures. Besides, when it comes to environmental behaviors, former researchers often only investigated deliberate ones which could not well predict the actual behaviors in real life, while the current study creatively includes spontaneous environmental behaviors apart from deliberate ones in order to depict a more comprehensive picture of the subjects’actual behaviors in their everyday life.The results show that:(1) The explicit and implicit connectedness to nature are independent of each other.(2) The explicit connectedness to nature can predict deliberate environmental behaviors while the implicit connectedness to nature can predict spontaneous environmental behaviors.(3) The environmental concern cannot predict environmental behaviors.(4) The implicit connectedness to nature and spontaneous environmental behaviors are not influenced by socially desirable responding.(5) The interaction between the socially desirable responding and the explicit connectedness to nature has a combined effect on deliberate environmental behaviors.In a word, the current study confirms the positive role connectedness to nature plays in promoting environmental behaviors, and accordingly comes up with advice to encourage pro-environmental behaviors by enhancing the connectedness to nature-reating more opportunities for individuals to contact with nature and arousing individuals’ biophilia. The intervention suggested by the present study, in contrast with traditional one that emphasizes environmental knowledge education, helps cultivate the individual’s long-term and stable pro-environmental lifestyle, and serves as a thrust to boost the cause of environmental protection.