A group plans to remove a stand of trees beside a school. The usual meeting asks about cost, shade, parking and maintenance. One participant asks what the trees currently shelter, how water moves through the ground, and who depends on the place during a hot day. The questions do not make the trees people. They widen attention beyond the immediate human user of the site and make the consequences of a decision more visible. That is one possible use of the term ecological empathy.
Ecological empathy is an emerging, not fully standardized concept for attentive regard to the lives, relationships and vulnerabilities within the more-than-human world. It can include an affective response to animals or damaged places, an effort to understand ecological interdependence, and the willingness to consider affected beings or systems in judgment. The term should not imply that an ecosystem has human feelings. Nor should it be equated with liking nature, holding a pro-environmental opinion, or making a verified conservation choice. These are related but different things.
Why the definition needs care
Ordinary interpersonal empathy often involves trying to understand or share another person’s experience. An animal may have experiences that warrant careful attention, but a forest, river or soil system does not have one unified mind whose feelings a person can read. Ecological empathy therefore uses analogy with interpersonal empathy while adding a different task: attending to relationships and consequences without projecting a human inner life onto every part of an ecosystem.
Lauren Marie Lambert proposes a relational account that joins contextual understanding of more-than-human interdependencies with an earth-system form of perspective taking. This is a conceptual framework for research and practice, not a validated measurement standard. Its strength is to move beyond a moment of pity for a damaged animal and ask how a decision affects networks of living beings and material conditions. Its limit is that the added breadth makes the construct harder to measure precisely.
There are narrower empirical constructs. Kim-Pong Tam developed research on dispositional empathy with nature, meaning a person’s tendency to understand and share a presumed emotional experience of the natural world. That can be studied with questionnaires and compared with interpersonal empathy or environmental values. Such measures do not automatically capture Lambert’s broader relational proposal. The fact that several authors use similar words does not make their definitions or results interchangeable.
This matters when a claim sounds attractive. “Ecological empathy makes people act sustainably” could refer to a trait scale, a short perspective-taking prompt, a photograph of an animal, or a programme about land stewardship. Those are different exposures, measures and outcomes. A responsible entry identifies the specific study behind any claim rather than treating the label as a single proven intervention.
Distinct from nature connectedness
Nature connectedness concerns a person’s felt relationship or identification with the natural world. Mayer and Frantz developed a Connectedness to Nature Scale to study a feeling of being in community with nature. The construct can include belonging, identity and emotional closeness. Ecological empathy, by contrast, is more specifically about attending to the perspective, vulnerability or interests of beings and relationships affected by an action. A person may feel close to a forest without asking how a particular development alters its habitat. Another may understand a wetland’s vulnerability through field work without reporting a strong personal sense of belonging there.
The distinction is not a hard psychological wall. Connectedness may make it easier to notice ecological consequences, and empathic attention may deepen connection. Measures can overlap. But an article on nature connectedness would focus on relationship and identification as such; this one focuses on how concern and perspective taking are directed beyond humans when a decision is being made. Calling both simply “connection” would hide the different questions researchers have asked.
Environmental concern differs again. Someone can believe climate change is serious, support regulation, or worry about pollution without imagining the situation of a particular animal or ecosystem. Conversely, a person may feel concern for one visible creature yet know little about a policy that protects less visible species. Beliefs, emotions, values and action can align, but they should be measured separately.
These distinctions help with honest education. A lesson may increase students’ affection for a local park, knowledge of species, or stated intention to reduce waste. None of those outcomes alone demonstrates ecological empathy in the broad relational sense, and none proves a durable change in behavior. The lesson can still be worthwhile. Precision lets educators say what changed and what remains to be learned.
What experiments have actually tested
Schultz examined perspective taking toward an animal harmed by pollution. In one study, participants instructed to take the animal’s perspective showed higher biospheric environmental concern than those instructed to remain objective. This is a more specific finding than “empathy saves nature.” The manipulation was brief, the target was an animal, and the measured outcome was concern in that study. The result is relevant to ecological empathy because it tests whether a change in attention to a nonhuman target can affect a particular environmental attitude.
Berenguer reported a study involving empathic responses toward a bird or a tree, environmental attitudes and willingness to act. The contrast between an animal and a tree is conceptually useful. People may find it easier to imagine an animal’s pain than a tree’s circumstances, and a tree-centered question may call for attention to dependence and habitat rather than projected sensation. The study’s reported associations and experimental conditions do not establish that any perspective-taking message will change long-term behavior in a different population.
A recent study of responses to images of humans, animals and ecosystems examined whether people report empathy beyond familiar human targets. Its sample of 122 French students showed associations between empathic responses to animals and natural ecosystems and pro-environmental attitudes. That is evidence that participants can give such responses under the study’s visual prompts. It is not proof that an ecosystem literally experiences suffering, that the same feelings appear without the images, or that the participants changed their conduct. Image valence and the way questions were phrased could also influence reports.
These studies open a research programme rather than closing it. Researchers can vary the target, distinguish affective response from factual understanding, and follow actual choices over time. A useful design asks whether a reported shift in feeling adds explanatory value beyond prior environmental values, social norms, material incentives and knowledge. Without that comparison, an empathy effect may partly reflect a broader concern that was already present.
Dispositional empathy and the problem of measurement
Tam’s work on dispositional empathy with nature sought to examine whether this tendency is distinguishable from empathy with humans and other predictors of conservation behavior. The findings suggest that the construct has some discriminant value in the studied samples and can be associated with conservation-related outcomes. Yet a questionnaire cannot make another being’s inner state directly observable. It records how respondents understand and report their own orientation toward nature.
Survey items can also invite socially desirable answers. A respondent may believe that caring for nature is a good identity to endorse. Researchers therefore test whether a scale merely repeats general environmental concern or social desirability. Even if it predicts a behavior measure after statistical controls, it may remain unclear whether the reported empathy caused the behavior, whether earlier action strengthened the reported empathy, or whether both reflect a third influence. The direction of influence requires stronger designs.
A broad ecological-empathy measure would face additional problems. What counts as its target: an individual animal, a species, a forest community, a human community affected by ecological change, or all of these? Does understanding a water cycle count even without emotion? If a person supports a policy that harms a charismatic species in the short term but protects a larger ecosystem, is that lower or higher empathy? These are not trick questions. They expose why values, knowledge and trade-offs cannot be compressed into one simple score.
Measurement is also culturally situated. Communities have different relationships to land, animals, rights, duties and stewardship. A scale written in one language may import assumptions about “nature” as separate from human society. A more careful approach asks what relationship is being studied, whose knowledge is included, and whether local people recognize the categories. An imported questionnaire can start a conversation; it cannot settle the meaning of care in every place.
From feeling to decisions
Empathic attention may make neglected consequences more salient. The student who sees a damaged nesting area may ask different questions about a building plan. But making a good decision also requires ecological data, practical alternatives, legal responsibilities and a fair process for people affected by the choice. A feeling cannot determine whether removing one tree is justified, which habitat action works best, or whose burden a policy shifts onto.
The original school-tree example illustrates the difference. A participant’s concern might prompt a survey of shade, species, soil, water and accessible routes. The group might then decide to preserve the stand, modify the design, or plant elsewhere. Ecological empathy contributed by widening the set of interests considered. The decision still requires evidence and accountable deliberation. If the group merely praises its own compassion while overlooking the actual site ecology, the word has done little work.
Individual consumption also has limits as an outcome. Some environmentally significant actions depend on cost, housing, transport, public infrastructure and regulation. Asking individuals to “feel more” can be unfair when their available choices are constrained. A relational view should include the design of institutions and collective decisions, rather than placing all responsibility on the person who receives an empathy prompt.
At the same time, an institutional view should not erase personal attention. Data tables can describe land use yet leave people inattentive to what a place means to its inhabitants. Ecological empathy can serve as a question that keeps attention open: Who or what is affected, and what do we still need to understand? That is the Institute’s practical synthesis, not a claim that a validated protocol has been shown to change every decision.
Avoiding projection and sentimental shortcuts
Empathy becomes misleading when it substitutes imagination for knowledge. A picture of a stranded animal may evoke compassion, but it does not reveal the ecological causes of a population’s decline. A forest may look undisturbed to a visitor while facing disease, fragmentation or an altered fire regime. An apparently barren urban lot may shelter species. Feeling for a place should lead to inquiry, not certify an answer.
Anthropomorphism is one possible shortcut. It can help people notice an animal as a living being, but attributing human wishes to an animal without evidence may obscure its needs. With ecosystems, saying that a river “wants” something can be a metaphor for hydrological or ecological requirements. It should not be confused with a literal psychological claim. The metaphor is useful only if it directs attention toward more accurate understanding and responsible action.
Another shortcut is choosing only appealing targets. A damaged bird may evoke concern more easily than insects, fungi or soil organisms. Yet ecosystem function and ethical choices are not ordered by cuteness. A relational account challenges the observer to consider less visible dependencies and to consult ecological knowledge. It also asks whose local experience is being ignored when an outside organization arrives with a story about “saving nature.”
Good ecological judgment can include conflict. Protecting one species can change conditions for another. A restoration project can affect livelihoods or access to land. Empathy does not eliminate these trade-offs; it makes more parties and consequences visible. A mature use of the concept accepts that care may require uncomfortable comparison, transparent reasoning and revision when evidence changes.
What the evidence does not show
The cited experiments and surveys do not establish one universal psychological faculty called ecological empathy. Lambert offers a relational theory; Tam studies a dispositional scale; Schultz and Berenguer examine specific perspective-taking and environmental outcomes. Their constructs overlap but are not identical. A result from one cannot be transferred to the others without testing.
Associations with environmental attitudes do not prove sustained pro-environmental behavior. The newer ecosystem-image study shows reported empathic responses and correlations with attitudes in a modest sample. It does not establish that viewing the images changed participants’ later choices. A brief prompt may shift a questionnaire answer without changing transport, energy use or policy support under real constraints.
Nor does the concept establish that ecosystems literally feel pain or possess a single perspective. Animals, plants, soils and rivers have different properties and may be affected in different ways. Ecological science, local knowledge and ethical reasoning remain necessary. Empathy should not be used to replace evidence about what an intervention does.
Finally, none of these sources shows that people who report less nature empathy are morally deficient or that emotional intensity is a reliable measure of stewardship. A reserved person may work carefully to protect a habitat; an emotionally moved person may make a poor ecological choice. The relevant question is how attention, understanding and responsibility shape a decision in context.
Keeping care answerable to evidence
The Institute uses ecological empathy as an invitation to notice relationships that a narrow human-centered calculation might miss. The invitation should lead to better questions: what lives here, how do these parts depend on one another, who knows the place, and what changes if we act? A good answer may require a field survey, a conversation with residents, or a revision of a plan. The concept is strongest when it remains answerable to that work.
At the school, the trees can be considered without pretending they speak or that feeling alone chooses the design. Their shade, shelter and role in water and soil can be investigated; the needs of children and neighbors can be discussed; alternatives can be tested. Ecological empathy names a widening of regard. It becomes useful when that regard improves inquiry and decision-making, while remaining honest about what research has and has not established.
Research references
- Lambert, L. M. (2024). Ecological empathy: Relational theory and practice. Ecosystems and People, 20(1), 2396919. View source
- Tam, K.-P. (2013). Dispositional empathy with nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 35, 92–104. View source
- Schultz, P. W. (2000). Empathizing with nature: The effects of perspective taking on concern for environmental issues. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 391–406. View source
- Berenguer, J. (2007). The effect of empathy in proenvironmental attitudes and behaviors. Environment and Behavior, 39(2), 269–283. View source
- Mayer, F. S., & Frantz, C. M. (2004). The connectedness to nature scale: A measure of individuals’ feeling in community with nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24(4), 503–515. View source
- Brunet, O., et al. (2026). Nature can suffer, too: Behavioral evidence of empathy with ecosystems and its link to pro-environmental attitudes. PeerJ, 14, e21383. View source