Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate an affective relationship with the natural environment in a non-western society and to determine its links with modernization. Emotional connectedness to nature, a significant predictor of nature-protective behavior, was assessed in a sample of 99 members of the Meru people of Kenya, recruited in places supposedly varying regarding their level of modernization: small market towns, farming villages, and a remote pastoralist settlement in the bush. The participants answered questions concerning their level of emotional affinity toward the natural environment and their lifestyle. The results show that feelings toward the natural environment in the studied population were, in general, positive. Such findings support the universality of the Biophilia hypothesis and are promising in the light of extant literature on the links between connectedness to nature and concern for the natural environment. Surprisingly we also found that a more traditional lifestyle was negatively related to emotional connectedness to nature. These findings suggest that contact with nature under conditions of direct dependence on the natural environment may have a different influence on people’s feelings toward nature than in the west. Contrary to the common view, we conclude that the impact of modernization on non-western people’s affective relationship with nature might have been unduly demonized.
Highlights
Since the industrial revolution, human pressure on the natural world has been growing, leading to global environmental degradation
In order to check the construct validity of the connectedness to nature scale adapted for the Meru sample, we performed Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
Contrary to the second hypothesis, we found that indicators of modernization such as place of residence and frequency of visits to the market towns were positively correlated with emotional connectedness to nature
Summary
Human pressure on the natural world has been growing, leading to global environmental degradation. It was suggested that the ecological crisis is inherently connected with western science, industrial capitalism and culture based on the biblical teachings that humans are to dominate nature (Gottlieb, 1996). Following this line of thought, it is treated as a sort of common knowledge that across the world non-western non-industrialized people live in greater harmony with the natural environment than people in industrialized societies (e.g., Gadgil et al, 1993). Integrated knowledge about their environments and beliefs that see nature as powerful and sacred are believed to have enabled various groups of Canadian First Nations to Emotional Connectedness to Nature Is Related to Modernization live in balance with their local environments for thousands of years (Turner et al, 2000), whereas the Tibetan Baima’s strong adherence to their traditional beliefs was recognized to play a key-role in biodiversity conservation and management of natural resources in their region (Luo et al, 2009)
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