Environmental Meaning and Ecosystem Management: Perspectives from Environmental Psychology and Human Geography

TLDR

Human dimensions research enriches ecological resource management by providing contextually rich, spatially and historically specific understandings of places, with environmental psychology framing people as social agents who create meaning in the environment and place serving as a focal point where natural forces, social relations, and human meanings intersect. The study reviews adaptive, goal‑directed, and sociocultural paradigms from environmental psychology and the concept of place from human geography to illustrate alternative approaches for studying and integrating environmental meaning into ecosystem management. The authors employ these paradigms and the place concept to demonstrate how environmental meaning can be studied and incorporated into ecosystem management practices. Together, these paradigms offer complementary conceptual tools for assessing and mapping the diverse, often competing environmental meanings that different constituencies attach to natural resources.

Abstract

The contribution of human dimensions research to the ecological paradigm emerging in natural resource management involves the development of contextually rich, and spatially and historically specific, understandings of places. As an eclectic and integrative field of inquiry, environmental psychology offers a growing body of research that promotes a view of the person as a social agent who seeks out and creates meaning in the environment. As developed in environmental psychology, research from the adaptive, goal‐directed, and sociocultural paradigms is reviewed to illustrate alternative approaches to studying environmental meaning. These paradigms, taken together, provide complementary conceptual approaches for assessment and mapping of the diverse and often competing environmental meanings that various constituencies attach to natural resources. From human geography, the concept of place offers a framework for integrating environmental meanings into ecosystem management. Place constitutes a concrete focal point where natural forces, social relations, and human meanings overlap and can be integrated in theory and practice.