Conservation Psychology entered the world of science as a scientific study that aims to understand the relationship between human behavior and the natural environment. It is oriented towards environmental sustainability, which includes conservation of resources and ecosystems and quality life for humans and species.

On the other hand, some scientists found no clear distinction between Conservation Psychology and other fields of science, including Environmental Psychology. However, Saunders (2003) believes that the science of Conservation Psychology is a fresh approach to “create stronger connections between the natural and social sciences, between research and practice, and between psychology and the other social sciences”.

Saunders believes that Conservation Psychology can be better understood through these other fields of science.

Conservation Biology

There are many similarities between conservation psychology and conservation biology. Conservation biology was conceptualized to provide principles and tools for the preservation of biodiversity. Similar with conservation biology, conservation psychology also has a mission that is oriented toward environmental sustainability. Further, conservation biology also intersects with a variety of subdisciplines within psychology, including the social and environmental psychology about environmental attitudes, values, and behavior.

Environmental Psychology

Environmental Psychology is the study of the interactions between humans and the environment. According to Psychology Today, it “explores how physical spaces influence the way we feel, think, and interact with the world”. However, EP differs with CP in various ways. CP emphasizes on relationships with the natural world, while EP focused on both the built and natural environments. CP also functions more like a super-field rather than a subdiscipline.

Environmental Sociology

ThoughCo.defined Environment Sociology as a subfield that focuses on the relationships between society and the environment. “Thus, the types of interactions studied by environmental sociologists are between the physical environment, social organizations, and social behavior”. However, they are similar with CP in a sense that ES also studies about the relationship between group behavior and environmental conditions, and its effects on economic livelihood and public health of populations.

Human Ecology

According to Britannica, Human Ecology studies about the interaction of organisms within their environments. “Human ecology views the biological, environmental, demographic, and technical conditions of the life of any people as an interrelated series of determinants of form and function in human cultures and social systems.” Human Ecology also includes other psychological variables.

Human Dimensions

Human Dimensions is another field of social research which studies about human interactions with the environment. “One of its goals is to apply concepts and empirical findings to the real world, contemporary problems of management”. This area exists in several forms and focuses, including wildlife, global warming, and natural resource management.

Ecopsychology

Beringer (2003) believes that Conservation Psychology is also related to Ecopsychology. Ecopsychology “explores humans’ psychological interdependence with the rest of nature and the implications for identity, health, and well-being”. However, CP and Ecopsychology differ in their position in the mainstream psychology. “Ecopsychology has sought to overcome the anthropocentric, reductionist, rationalist and scientist biases inherent in modern psychology (Kidner, 1994)”

There have been various psychological research to measure human’s care for the natural environment. These approaches can encourage personal relationships with natures.

Some of these famous research include Tanner & Chawla’s study about significant life experience; Kaplan & Kaplan’s research about the restorative qualities of nature; Clayton &Opotow’s environmental identity research; and Khan, Kellert & Wilson’s Biophilia research. On the other hand, Vernon et. Al (1997) portrayed how principles “derived from similar research have been applied in a zoo setting, using a process of collaboration between researchers and educators”.

According to Clayton, zoos and aquariums are “interesting setting for psychologists” which can help them measure how individuals and organizations make profession toward their conservation measures.

In May 2002, Brookfield Zoo invited a group of 65 leaders from various disciplines including sociology, philosophy, conservation biology and most especially, psychology. They were asked to “describe certain conservation initiatives in need of social science research” to come up with perspectives to address the practical issues. The researchers and advocates were divided into four groups to study about these four themes:

Connections To Animals

The panel was asked to know about caring relationships with the natural world develop and how caring for animals lead to caring for the environment in general. The group “focused on how to document the ways zoos and aquariums contribute toward developing a caring attitude towards animals”. They have offered various ideas from the human-animal literature that would be essential for crafting more programs and evaluations.

Connections To Place

The second panel was asked to know about how urban settings help their populations celebrate local biodiversity and develop a sense of regional pride. They also sought about what techniques would be essential to encourage people to get involved in conservation behaviors at the community level. They offered various ideas “ranging from social marketing techniques to what we know about creating a place-based environmental identity in an urbanizing world”.

Environmentally-Friendly Behavior

The third group was oriented to discover how they will choose among the different theoretical models and practical approaches for encouraging behavior change. The researchers explored the approaches and selected among the appropriate level of analysis to know they can promote environmentally-friendly behavior.

Environmental Values

The fourth panel considered questions about how they can create values-based communications that address different types of environmental concerns and how they can build public support and influence national policy. Their discussion explored “various value systems that underlie environmental concern and how to measure them”.

For Saunders (2003), “conservation psychology will need efficient ways to facilitate cooperation between researchers and practitioners, and between the researchers themselves”. Thus, there is more needed studies and research to mitigate the inherent complexity of environmental problems.

Becker and his colleagues (1999) proposed additional materials on how to “reorient social sciences better address sustainability issues”. A sample conservation psychology project might be to look for opportunities to test models and develop new approaches. Lastly, networking efforts are essential to include different cultures and perspectives. Assorted viewpoints will “lead to a richer vocabulary for describing the human relationship to nature”.

Conservation Psychology aims to provide an understanding of how to make the environment sustainable for humans and other living things. There has been researching conducted to discover means for the prevention or delay of environmental deterioration. Apart from the lenses of Psychology, other designs and approaches of research can support the end goal of environmental sustainability.

Carol Saunders (2003) proposed two broad outcome categories as a way to formulate questions. According to her, organizing research areas in Conservation Psychology is according to these two broad outcome areas:

• how humans behave towards nature (with the goal of creating durable behavior change at multiple levels and sustainable relationships), and/or
• how humans care about/value nature (with the goal of creating harmonious relationships and an environmental ethic)

Within these outcome areas, research questions may vary with regards to the individual or group level. To obtain these outcome categories, Saunders suggested three approaches: theoretical, applied and evaluative.

Conservation Behavior

Basically, a sustainable environment can be achieved through the rejection of negative behaviors that harm the environment. We can adopt environmental-friendly practices, including but not limited to, recycling, waste segregation, water conservation, energy conservation, and using CFC-free products. These are called conservation behavior.

According to Saltz and Berger-Tal, conservation behavior “assists the investigation of species endangerment associated with managing animals impacted by anthropogenic activities”. It is still associated with how human behavior can directly affect the sustainability of the natural environment.

Understanding the Psychology of Behavior Change

There have been numerous studies to discuss how individuals and groups can achieve conservation behavior. For Kurz (2002), there are four psychological rational approaches to environmentally sustainable behavior: rational economic models, social-dilemmas models, attitude models and models based on behavior modification and learning theory.

There have also been approaches that attempted to look at the relationships between attitudes, beliefs, values, knowledge, and behaviors, among others.

Developing Behavior Change Strategies and Measuring Success

According to Saunders (2003), research areas related to conservation behavior will focus on “how to identify the most appropriate strategies for producing environmental behavior change” and “how to measure the success of those applications with respect to the CP mission”.

There have been various researchers who attempted to identify behavioral change strategies based on approaches derived from the literature.

Caring About/Valuing Nature

This outcome category refers to the harmonious relationship of individuals and groups with nature. “It includes concerns about the quality of life for humans and other species, as well as the quality of the human-nature relationship itself.”

Understanding the Psychology of Caring About Nature

The theoretical approaches for understanding the relationship between humans and nature need to extract (1) the effects of experiences of humans with the natural environment (2) their concept of “care for nature” (3) humans’ means of taking care of animals and nature and (4) their environmental values.

Developing Strategies to Foster Caring, Shape Values, and Measure Success

According to Saunders, applied research can be used to (1) “identify the most promising strategies for fostering ways of caring about nature” (2) “find ways to reframe debates and strategically communicate to the existing values that people have” (3) “identify the most promising strategies for shifting the societal discourse about human-nature relationships” and (4) “measure the success of these applications with respect to the CP mission”.

The issues surrounding the natural environment can be understood in various approaches. In the lens of Conservation Psychology, the environmental problems can be mitigated through the use of psychological principles.

Conservation Psychology suggests that the human behavior is very vital in changing the current scenario of the environment. According to Richard Osbaldiston (2013), “individuals have to change their behavior”.

Osbaldiston believes that the application of psychological principles “can influence individual behavior related to environmental issues”. He uses two approaches to collect the data needed for the body of research – experimental and theoretical.

Let us know more about the two approaches presented by Osbaldiston.

Experimental Approach

According to Osbaldiston (2013), experimental designs are used to promote conservation behaviors. The approach “compares a treatment or intervention against a control group to test the effectiveness of the treatment at promoting behaviors”.

He identified in his meta-analysis ten treatments or interventions to promote conservation behaviors. The following are as follows:

• Making it easy (changing circumstances to make the behavior more convenient)
• Using prompts (reminders to call attention to when or where it is appropriate to perform the behavior
• Providing justifications (rational reasons as to why the behavior should be performed)
• Providing instructions (how to perform the behavior)
• Providing feedback (about the extent to which a person has performed the desired behavior)
• Providing rewards (incentives for performing desired behavior)
• Social modeling (passing information from one group to the other through demonstration)
• Utilizing cognitive dissonance (access pre-existing attitudes or beliefs that are consistent with the desired behavior)
• Requiring commitment (dedication in performing the behavior)
• Setting goals (performance of the desired behavior)

Despite the design resulting in environmental impact, the research on conservation behavior focused greatly on “just a small set of behaviors”. The most studied behavior is recycling, followed by energy conservation; water conservation; and gasoline conservation.

Theoretical Approach

On the other hand, theoretical research used surveys to “assess how various psychological constructs are related to conservation behaviors.” Basically, this approach assesses a variety of underlying psychological constructs including attitudes, knowledge, motives, values, and norms, which are hypothesized to influence conservation behavior.

Through the theoretical research, there have been dozens of theories that have been proposed “to explain why people engage in conservation behavior”. However, only six theories were reviewed and were widely used to represent Conservation Psychology.

The frequently used theory in conservation psychology research was the Theory of Planned Behavior by IcekAjzen (1991). The theory suggests that “a person’s behavior is determined by his/her intention to perform the behavior and that this intention is, in turn, a function of his/her attitude toward the behavior and his/her subjective norm.” Bamberg and Moser used this theory to study pro-environmental behavior.

The greatest strength of the theoretical approach is that it allows researchers to use different predictor variables. However, there are differences in how these variables are being defined. They have varied views on standard concepts such as attitudes, skills, values, norms, beliefs, and knowledge. Further, the theoretical approach does not actually observe conservation behavior, rather, most of them are based on self-report measures.”