Journal of Environmental Psychology最新文献

A connection to nature can be healing and restorative for children, especially when they are coping with psychological symptoms. Better understanding the essence of this connection and investigating the associated variables can, therefore, prove useful. This research consisted of three studies measuring the connection to nature among youth in Turkey's unique, non-Western context. In Study-1 (n = 214), the 14-item Connection to Nature Index (CNI) was tested with confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the CNI was a valid and reliable instrument in the Turkish sample. Study-2 (n = 375) examined personal factors predicting children's connection to nature. Regression analysis showed that gender was a significant predictor of CNI. We also found that connection to nature increased as screen time decreased and the frequency of contact with nature increased. In Study 3 (n = 404), we found that hope and satisfaction with life acted as serial and complete mediators between CNI and psychological symptoms. Unlike the results of previous studies conducted in the West, this study highlights for the first time the importance of children's connection with the natural world in Turkey, an Eastern society.

Individual and household behaviors are key targets for climate change mitigation efforts, and studies suggest that people who enact more pro-environmental behaviors tend to experience higher levels of well-being. Yet these studies have typically used coarse-grained, retrospective reports that offer limited insight into the immediate impacts of specific behaviors. In three studies (total N = 8,522 observations, N = 1,353 US and UK participants) we adopted a highly fine-grained approach. Using the day reconstruction method, we zoomed in on particular moments in everyday life to examine links between specific behaviors and different aspects of well-being. This revealed generally positive associations, but also substantial variation. Pro-environmental behaviors are more closely and consistently associated with positive and especially “eudaimonic” dimensions of well-being. And more active, effortful, and social behaviors tended to show stronger positive associations. Although the relationships between pro-environmental behaviors and well-being are considerably more complex than prior research has indicated, these findings continue to suggest that ecological and individual well-being can be pursued in tandem.

Climate change is one of, if not the greatest, global challenges of this century, as its consequences can have a wide range of impacts on society, the environment, and the personal lives of many individuals. Consequently, many people experience severe psychological distress in the form of fears, anxieties, or worries, elicited by one, some, or all these different consequences. Thus, climate change distress can be conceptualized as a domain-specific construct. We conducted a literature review and a qualitative lay survey to develop the Domain-Specific Climate Change Distress Scale (DCCDS), with a generic climate change distress domain and six sub-domains (ecology, existence, food supply, future generations, society, and wealth). In the first study, we validated this structure with a bifactor-(S-1) model and refined the scale according to its psychometric properties. In a second study, we showed convergent and discriminant validity with the respective constructs. In a third study, we demonstrated the external validity of the scale by investigating the relation of its sub-domains to fear reactions to real-life news excerpts and willingness to donate to different charity organizations. Each sub-domain showed incremental validity over the generic domain. The scale had adequate psychometric properties and stability over three measurement timepoints in German gender-balanced convenience samples. We thus conclude that the domain-specific conceptualization of climate change distress yields important diagnostic benefits and could provide important insights into the future handling of climate change distress on a political, socio-cultural, and personal level.

This study investigated the restorative effects of repeated listening to natural sounds indoors in real-life settings. Previous studies have mainly been cross-sectional and laboratory studies. We designed an online field experiment lasting seven days, in which we assigned 166 university students to one of four intervention groups: (1) listening to natural sounds, (2) sitting in silence (i.e., another means of restoration), (3) reading news online (i.e., a prevalent but not necessarily restorative activity), or (4) no intervention (i.e., the control). Self-reported restorative experience was measured both before and after the daily intervention (but once a day in the no-intervention group), and the weekly-measured perceived stress and state mindfulness were assessed at the beginning and end of the intervention week. Linear hypothesis tests based on a linear mixed-effects model (LMM) showed that, at the day level, natural sounds were the most restorative, followed by silence, while reading news proved not to be restorative. In addition, the daily restorative effect of natural sounds was carried over to later days and its seven-day accumulation was half as great as the general daily restorative effect, although the within-day pre-post change ostensibly diminished over time. An ANCOVA and paired t-tests revealed that a reduction in the weekly-measured perceived stress and an increase in the weekly-measured mindfulness took place after listening to natural sounds or sitting in silence, with the former intervention type having stronger effects, aligning with the results for the restorative experience. Our findings suggest that the carryover effect of repeated listening to natural sounds for psychological restoration may more than compensate for the diminishing returns in within-day pre-post changes over the course of a week.

Promoting prosocial behavior toward future generations is crucial to combat societal challenges such as climate change and the depletion of natural resources. Here, we invoke a social dilemma lens to predict and promote future-oriented prosociality in four preregistered online experiments (total N = 2407). Integrating research on temporal preferences with research on social preferences, we show that (i) individuals are willing to make self-costly contributions to future beneficiaries without personal return on investment; (ii) universally prosocial preferences predict such future-oriented prosociality most strongly, and (iii) individuals with weakly or strongly parochial preferences can also be motivated toward future-oriented prosociality if the future beneficiary of their contributions is aligned with their social preferences, i.e., when the future beneficiary is part of an in-group. This is true for both minimal groups (Studies 2–3) and real-world groups (Study 4). Our findings suggest that policies aimed at promoting people's future-oriented prosociality could be made more effective by tailoring to the beneficiary of their prosociality in the future.

Augmented reality (AR) technology has the potential to transform how individuals interact with real-world environments, offering individuals the unique capability to induce virtual changes in a place. In two studies (N_total = 2305), we investigated the relationship between place attachment and willingness to use different types of AR applications: informative (focused on providing information about the place's past and future) and transformative (altering the appearance of a place or the way it is used). We used different measures of place attachment, distinguished by the personal significance attributed to the place. We found that traditional place attachment and place dependence were negatively correlated with willingness to use informative AR applications; the opposite relationship was observed for active place attachment and place identity. Transformative AR applications were more accepted by individuals with high active place attachment; however, we did not observe the expected negative relationship between traditional place attachment and this type of AR. Our study is the first to show how various forms of attachment shape willingness to implement virtual alterations in real locations, offering a preliminary understanding of whether these changes are perceived as positive or negative.

Research on how to increase humanness attribution to others is limited. We hypothesize that nature contact could be one trigger. This hypothesis was confirmed across six studies (N = 1622). Specifically, Study 1 demonstrated that people who could access nature elements in their immediate living environment showed higher levels of humanness perception than those who couldn't. Furthermore, inducing nature contact, including making participants stay in a room with plants (Study 2), situate in a park (Study 3), and imagine contacting nature (Studies 4–6), increased humanness attribution to others. The effect of nature contact on the perception of humanness could be observed not only in interpersonal contexts (Studies 1–3 and 5) but also in intergroup contexts (Studies 4 and 6). Moreover, the effect was mediated by self-transcendence (Studies 5 and 6). Finally, increased humanness attribution due to nature contact further promoted prosociality (Study 6). The theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Research indicates that exposure to natural environments positively impacts both physiological and psychological well-being. However, extraordinary, awesome landscapes, such as the mesmerizing Arctic and mysterious underwater scene, particularly contribute to enhancing emotional well-being. More exploration needs to be done exploration into the specific emotional and healing recovery effects of extraordinary natural landscapes. This study employs a combination of objective physiological measurements and subjective evaluations to investigate the therapeutic benefits of extraordinary natural landscapes. Sixty-two university volunteers experienced three ordinary natural landscapes and four extraordinary natural landscapes in a virtual reality setting. Participants wore wearable devices to collect physiological data, including EEG and HRV valves. Subjective questionnaires, semantic differential scales to assess the extraordinariness of landscapes, perceived restorativeness scale, and PAD emotional scale were utilized to evaluate recovery effects and emotional impacts. Results showed that: 1) Compared to ordinary nature, extraordinary nature demonstrates more significant recovery and emotional improvement effects. 2) The semantic differential scale evaluated the extraordinariness of natural landscapes across five dimensions: awe, remoteness, mystery, complexity, and uniqueness, with uniqueness being the predominant influencing factor. 3) As the extraordinariness of natural landscapes increases, the recovery effect also improves gradually. However, excessive exposure to extraordinary natural landscapes shows a diminishing therapeutic effect. These findings underscore the superior recovery effects of extraordinary nature, validated by physiological data and subjective ratings. The study highlights the potential of extraordinary nature as therapeutic material, offering a fresh perspective and quantitative data to study therapeutic landscapes.

The public acknowledges the importance of water quality, and threats to water quality can provoke strong emotional responses. Despite this, the public often resists policies protecting water quality. Research with 349 US residents demonstrated that (1) emotions about specific water policies were more predictive of policy support than emotions about water quality and (2) hope about water policies was a particularly strong predictor of water policy support. In both between-person and within-person analyses, water-policy hope was a stronger predictor of water-policy support than water-policy anxiety, anger, and neutral affect–although these other emotions were related to water-policy support. These findings among water-policy emotions replicated results from a Pilot study with 148 US undergraduate students. The main study also demonstrated that water-policy support increased when policy descriptions explained how policies would improve water quality via hydro systems, and it did so by increasing feelings of water-policy hope. This research suggests that a full range of affective reactions to water policy and water quality should be considered when motivating support for policies protecting water quality.