Speaker
Description
People differ in their emotional connection to nature. The more nature connected a person is, the greater the stated pro-environmental intentions and behaviours and the greater their health and wellbeing. Little is known, however, about how nature connection promotes concrete pro-environmental actions, such as willingness to pay for conservation measures (WTP) and whether this effect is mediated or moderated by health.
To test this, we conducted a Geman-wide choice experiment survey based on 15000 participants who indicated their WTP for different agricultural conservation scenarios. Nature connectedness was measured with the 6-item Nature Relatedness Scale, while we also measured people's health and wellbeing through assessing self-reported mental and physical health and life satisfaction.
Using a Hybrid Choice model, we estimate latent variables for people’s utility, nature connection and health. Our results show to what extent nature relatedness and health are related to willingness to pay and wheather the association between nature connection and health was mediated. Additionally, we can demonstrate if health moderates the relationship between nature connection and WTP, i.e. stronger nature connection resulted in greater WTP for people who feel healthier.
Based on a representative sample of 15000 German residents, our results demonstrate that for a high income nation such as Germany, nature connection is strongly related to WTP, particularly when people also feel healthy. Nature-based interventions that foster nature connection are therefore crucial to increase environmental stewardship in times of climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet more research is needed that translates our findings and conclusions to non-Western societies.
| Status of your work | First results |
|---|---|
| Early Career Researcher Award | Yes, the paper is eligible |
