Participating in environmental stewardship programs directly benefits the local environment. Volunteering at urban parks improves the quality of natural areas while encouraging volunteers to develop an attachment to the parks. In addition to cleaning up or restoring the park, participating in these programs may have positive effects on the volunteers themselves, yet little is known about these impacts. For instance, research suggests that if volunteers are engaged more frequently in nature, they may feel more positively about and become more connected to nature, do more pro-environmental behaviors, or become more civically engaged around environmental issues. This study explored whether there was a connection between volunteering at a park, environmental identity, pro-environmental behaviors, and civic engagement.
In this study, the researchers focused on environmental identity, the relationship between volunteering and environmental behaviors, and the effect of social influence. They explored whether environmental identity, which includes the connection that people feel to a place, may predict how likely people are to engage in pro-environmental behaviors, such as stewardship of an urban park. This study explored the relationship between the frequency of volunteering and the likeliness of civic engagement. The authors differentiated between private pro-environmental behaviors, such as eradicating invasive species from one's own yard, and public pro-environmental behaviors, which included reaching out to local officials. Finally, the researchers considered the impact of social influence, which refers to a change in behavior due to observation of other people exhibiting environmental behaviors, and how frequency of volunteering may relate to these behaviors and to environmental literacy. The 3 levels of environmental literacy, ranging from lowest to highest, are entry, ownership, and empowerment.
This study was conducted at an urban area managed by Portland Parks and Recreation (PPR) in Oregon and Vancouver-Clark County Parks and Recreation (VCPR) in Washington. Researchers attended every volunteering event at each park site over a 5-month period. At each site, they approached every other volunteer to distribute a survey with closed-ended and two open-ended questions. A total of 172 volunteers from 18 events participated in the study. The vast majority of respondents, 85%, identified as Caucasian. All were adults, aged 18-72, with an equal number of males and females. The questionnaires asked participants to rank their environmental attitudes and describe the frequency of participation in volunteering events. Based on their response, participants were divided into three levels of participation: level one included people who had volunteered 1-2 times, level two included those who had volunteered 3-10 times per year, and level three included those who participated at least 10 times per year. The results were analyzed using statistics.
This study found that people who volunteered more often were generally more likely to perform pro-environmental behaviors and have greater levels of environmental literacy. In addition, results indicated that frequent volunteers felt more attachment to the local area and more responsible for solving environmental issues, making them more likely to be civically engaged.
In the study, more frequent volunteers tended to be higher educated and have higher income compared to people who volunteered less frequently. Participants who volunteered more often (levels two and three) had greater levels of environmental identity and private pro-environmental behavior, such as removing invasive species from one's yard. Stewardship also provided opportunities for volunteers to reinforce their environmental identities. Participants who volunteered most frequently were most likely to engage in public pro-environmental behaviors, such as reaching out to local officials, and level three volunteers also had higher levels of civic engagement.
The authors observed that, within level two, participants who volunteered more than 5 times per year were significantly more likely to engage in more private pro-environmental behaviors than those who participated 1 to 5 times a year. Participants who volunteered more were more likely to have higher environmental literacy. Researchers also found that social influence may impact changes in behavior, because frequent volunteers may engage in discussion about environmental practices in their own homes and cause a spillover of behavioral change among volunteers.
This study did not monitor volunteers' behaviors before volunteering and therefore it cannot infer that participating in the park stewardship activities caused participants to do more pro-environmental behaviors. Results may also differ in other parks with volunteers in other kinds of programs.
The researchers recommend that organizers of stewardship events promote the benefits of volunteering to motivate people to volunteer for the first time or continue volunteering. They should highlight the opportunities for social interactions, nature education, place attachment, and resilient communities. The authors also suggest that program coordinators try to make volunteering impacts more visible, so that volunteers may remain interested after seeing the benefits of their labor.
The Bottom Line
This study surveyed volunteers at parks in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, to understand how frequency of volunteering may impact environmental identity, behaviors, and civic engagement. Researchers found that people who volunteered more often at parks had stronger environmental identities and more often engaged in private pro-environmental behavior, such as removing invasive plants from their yards. Those who volunteered frequently at parks also had greater civic engagement, such as reaching out to elected officials, and were more likely to develop social connections while volunteering. Because regular participants may share environmentally-friendly practices among themselves and drive environmental political action, the researchers recommend that organizations promote education and the opportunity for social interactions as benefits to stewardship activities in urban parks.