Researchers have looked at many aspects of people's relationships with nature, including factors such as people's feelings of connection with nature, the extent to which they include nature in their conceptions of themselves, their environmental identities, and many others. In this study, the researchers wondered if people's relationships with nature could be similar to people's interpersonal relationships. Specifically, could the researchers build a model of commitment to the environment that's based on previous research that examines commitment in relationships?
According to past work, commitment to a relationship depends on a person's satisfaction with, investments in, and alternatives to a relationship. The more satisfied a person is with what they get from a relationship, the more committed he or she is. Likewise, the more a person has invested in a relationship, in terms of tangible resources (e.g., money) or intangible resources (e.g., time), the more committed they will be to the relationship. Finally, the more alternatives a person sees to a relationship--in other words, the more other ways they think they could derive the same benefits--the less likely they are to remain committed.
The authors predicted that these same factors might also explain a person's commitment to the environment. They hypothesized that the more investments in the environment (for example, in terms of time and effort spent in helping the natural environment), the greater their satisfaction with the environment (for example, in terms of how much they enjoy spending time in natural areas), and the fewer alternatives to the environment (for example, the perception that there are many other ways a person might enjoy spending their time other than in natural areas), the greater a person's commitment was likely to be. Following that, the authors predicted that the more committed a person was, the more likely he or she would be to sacrifice for the environment and report engaging in pro-environment behaviors.
The authors surveyed nearly 250 undergraduate students who were completing a required introductory psychology course. The survey included a scale to measure a person's commitment, but also included scales to look at other person-environment relationship measures, including a person's inclusion of nature in their conception of himself or herself, environmental identity, connectedness to nature, and ecological worldview. The survey also assessed the students' general ecological behavior and willingness to sacrifice for the environment.
As predicted, the students who reported greater satisfaction with and investments in the environment reported greater commitment to the environment. Alternatives did not turn out to be connected to commitment, and that finding is in line with other research that has applied these measures to non-romantic relationships, such as a person's commitment to friends or sports. Because these are non-exclusive relationships, the presence of alternatives probably is not as important.
Moreover, the researchers found that students with greater commitment to the environment were more likely to report a willingness to sacrifice for the environment and performance of pro-environment behaviors. This finding was true even when the researchers controlled for other factors such as the respondents' ecological worldview, connectedness to nature, inclusion of nature in the self, and environmental identity.
The researchers think that while this finding has interesting academic implications because it “highlights the underpinnings of commitment,” it also has practical applications. They explain:
In the present study, we learned that satisfaction with the environment and investments in the environment are associated with greater commitment. Theoretically, interventions designed to enhance individuals' experiences or perceptions of satisfaction (e.g., experiences in the natural environment that yield benefits to individuals) or investments (e.g., actions individuals take that expend effort to benefit the natural environment) should lead to greater felt commitment to the environment, and therefore greater pro-environmental behavior.
The Bottom Line
Although this was a small study, the results suggest that people who want to encourage environmental behaviors in the audiences they serve should emphasize the satisfaction people derive from the environment and the investments they've made in the environment. In this research, these two factors contributed to people's commitment to the environment, which in turn made them more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors.