How you relate to nature
A research-backed map of how people come to feel close to nature. Studying what actually deepens that bond, environmental psychologists found it grows through five routes — not from learning facts about nature, but from contact through the senses, an emotional bond, the meaning we read into it, compassion for its welfare, and its beauty. This sorts you by the pathway that draws you in most: the door you come through, rather than how much you love the natural world.
The pathways to nature connectedness (Lumber, Richardson & Sheffield, 2017) are a validated framework in environmental psychology. Testing what deepens a person's bond with the natural world, the researchers found five routes mattered — contact, emotion, meaning, compassion and beauty — while knowledge-based activities did not. This asks which pathway most draws you in. (Pathways to Nature Connectedness (Lumber, Richardson & Sheffield, 2017))
Groups
- Contact — I come to nature through my senses — birdsong, the scent of rain, a sunset — for the simple pleasure of being in it.
- Emotion — I come to nature through feeling — an emotional bond and love for it that I like to reflect on and share.
- Meaning — I come to nature through meaning — its symbols and metaphors, and what the living world represents to me.
- Compassion — I come to nature through care — extending myself to it, with ethical concern for its creatures and the planet.
- Beauty — I come to nature through beauty — drawn in by its aesthetic wonder, and by the art that captures it.
References
- Lumber, R., Richardson, M., & Sheffield, D. (2017). Beyond knowing nature: Contact, emotion, compassion, meaning, and beauty are pathways to nature connection. PLoS ONE, 12(5), e0177186
- Kellert, S. R., & Wilson, E. O. (Eds.) (1993). The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press
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