Conservation as Integration: Desire to Belong as Motivation for Environmental Conservation
Stacey Mac Donald, Henk Staats
Abstract
Considering the growing need to protect nature and acknowledging that not everyone has intrinsic desires to do so, what happens when social, community-based motives are seen to align with pro-environmental behavior? Specifically, the hypothesis addressed in this study is that individuals engage in actions to protect the natural environment at least partly to improve their sense of belonging to their community. To test this hypothesis, we distributed an online survey in rural regions of the UK. We found that particularly people who are concerned about their reputation and have a strong desire to belong engage in conservation actions. Our findings support the hypothesis that people conserve the environment to enhance their sense of belonging and illustrate that there are different additional processes at work that affect the relationship between desire to belong and engagement in conservation actions.