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Connectedness and Environmental Behavior: Sense of Interconnectedness and Pro-Environmental Behavior
Abstract
The expansion of one’s sense of identity to include various aspects of the world, both human
and non-human, may relate to how one treats the world. This sense of interconnectedness
can be domain specific, as through identification with nature and the future, or very
general, as through an expanded transpersonal identification with all of reality unlimited
by time and space. This study explored the relationship between these two specific and
the more general type of interconnectedness on environmental beliefs and behavior. A
sample of 210 participants completed a battery of interconnectedness measures, including
two specific measures, the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) and Consideration of
Future Consequences Scale (CFC), and a transpersonal measure, the Self-Expansiveness
Level Form Transpersonal Scale (SELF-TS). Participants also completed a measure of
environmental beliefs, the New Ecological Paradigm Scale (NEP), and a self-report measure
of their environmental behavior. The CNS, CFC, and SELF-TS significantly intercorrelated,
supporting that they measure a common underlying construct: interconnectedness. In
addition, the CNS and CFC correlated significantly with both the NEP and environmental
behavior, but the SELF-TS did not. Furthermore, the CNS and the CFC, as well as their
interaction, predicted environmental behavior in a regression model, while the SELF-TS
did not. These results suggest that specific indicators of feeling interconnected with nature
and the future are relevant to environmental beliefs and behavior, whereas a broader sense of
transpersonal interconnectedness may not relate as well in this specific domain.
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Recommended Citation
Hoot, R. E., & Friedman, H. (2011). Hoot, R. E., & Friedman, H. (2011). Connectedness and environmental behavior: Sense of interconnectedness and pro-environmental behavior. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 30(1-2), 89–100.. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 30 (1). Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies/vol30/iss1/10