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      Nature Relatedness and Environmental Concern of Young People in Ecuador and Germany

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          Abstract

          Today’s societies are confronted by a daily biodiversity loss, which will increase in the face of climate change and environmental pollution. Biodiversity loss is a particularly severe problem in so-called biodiversity hotspots. Ecuador is an example of a country that hosts two different biodiversity hotspots. Human behavior – in developing as well as in industrial countries such as Germany – must be considered as one of the most important direct and indirect drivers of this global trend and thus plays a crucial role in environmentalism and biodiversity conservation. Nature relatedness and environmental concern have been identified as important environmental psychological factors related to people’s pro-environmental behavior. However, the human–nature relationship depends on a variety of other factors, such as values, gender, nationality, qualities of environmental concern and time spent in nature. This study compared young people from Ecuador and Germany with regard to their nature relatedness and environmental concern. Furthermore, the role of the aforementioned factors was investigated. In total, we surveyed 2,173 high school students from Germany ( M age = 14.56 years, SD = 1.45; female: 55.1%) and 451 high school students from Ecuador ( M age = 14.63 years, SD = 1.77; female: 55.3%). We found that young Ecuadorians were more related to nature than young people from Germany. Additionally, we found country-specific differences in the structure of environmental concern and in the role of gender in the explanation of biospheric environmental concern and nature relatedness. In both samples, the self-transcendence value cluster was a significant positive predictor for biospheric environmental concern and nature relatedness. Time spent in nature was a significant positive predictor for nature relatedness in both samples. The results are an empirical basis for the assumption of culture-specific differences in human–nature relationships.

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          The Value Basis of Environmental Concern

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            Emotional Affinity toward Nature as a Motivational Basis to Protect Nature

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              Happiness is greater in natural environments

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Psychol
                Front Psychol
                Front. Psychol.
                Frontiers in Psychology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-1078
                07 March 2019
                2019
                : 10
                : 453
                Affiliations
                Faculty of Biology/Chemistry, Osnabrück University , Osnabrück, Germany
                Author notes

                Edited by: Tobias Krettenauer, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

                Reviewed by: Siegmar Otto, University of Hohenheim, Germany; Elizabeth K. Nisbet, Trent University, Canada

                *Correspondence: Maximilian Dornhoff, dornhoff@ 123456biologie.uni-osnabrueck.de

                This article was submitted to Environmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00453
                6416211
                3539e03f-36e2-4f17-9137-bc9360ccdc4e
                Copyright © 2019 Dornhoff, Sothmann, Fiebelkorn and Menzel.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 31 August 2018
                : 15 February 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 4, Equations: 0, References: 84, Pages: 13, Words: 0
                Funding
                Funded by: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst 10.13039/501100001655
                Award ID: 57141826
                Categories
                Psychology
                Original Research

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                biodiversity,students,values,cross-cultural,environmental concern,gender,sustainable development,self-transcendence

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