A Conservation Aesthetic

A CONSERVATION AESTHETIC

We seek contacts with nature because we derive pleasure from them. –A. Leopold

Aldo Leopold is remembered most for his promotion of a land ethic. But in his book, A Sand County Almanac, he also suggested that conservation behavior could be promoted though use of a conservation aesthetic. A land ethic, whether voluntary or mandatory, involves in Leopold’s words "a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence," an obligation to practice restraint. Techniques exist for encouraging adoption of a land ethic. Unfortunately the most commonly used strategies of education, regulation and economic manipulation are rarely sufficient, sometimes ineffective and occasionally inappropriate.

A conservation aesthetic, which can be viewed as a form of intrinsic motivation, provides a new strategy for encouraging ecologically responsible behavior. Such a strategy, one involving non-economic values and rewards, is familiar to us all. People do many things which are wholesome even without the promise of tangible returns. Only recently has research focused on using this gentler means of encouraging voluntary adoption of behaviors compatible with environmental sustainability. Data from over two decades of research provide insight on intrinsic motivation. These data indicate that people derive a series of distinct satisfactions from environmentally-appropriate behavior. The satisfactions are quite specific involving, for example, competence, frugality and participation. Furthermore, there is a strong and meaningful relationship between these satisfactions and specific environmentally responsible behaviors. These findings have theoretical and practical relevance. Our theoretical understanding of why people bother to conserve may be improved by investigating more than extrinsic inducement. Attention should be given to the personal satisfactions which people derive from the very same activities we so often try to coerce them into doing. The practical benefits involve the potential for intrinsic motivation to initiate, but more importantly, maintain or help restart commitment to conservation.

It should be recalled that the theme under discussion here concerns deep, lasting contentment about sustainable living. It appears that this aspect of an individual's mental life not only exists, but is valued. Such aspects of mental functioning can be considered to be vital to an individual's survival; it is thus essential that the individual not only be capable of carrying them out, but also find them satisfying to do. They are, in other words, intrinsically reinforcing. Individuals who did not find them satisfying would presumably devote less effort to them and hence be less effective. In this sense these patterns of satisfaction confer an adaptive advantage on the individuals who possess them, and to the communities these individuals inhabit. One might thus expect them to be relatively widespread within the population. They might of course take on different forms in subgroups of the community; nonetheless the hypothesized role and ubiquitous nature of such motives make them worthy of exploration in other contexts. And to the extent that they lend themselves to being linked to sustainable living, the fact that they may be widespread makes them of crucial interest.

FROM: THE LOCALIZATION PAPERS

Raymond De Young, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Environmental Psychology and Planning
School of Natural Resources and Environment
Univeristy of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041

Please request permission before reprinting or citing.

rdeyoung [at] umich [dot] edu

File updated: November 2, 2009