A person calls a nearby wetland “part of who I am.” Another enjoys walking there but feels no particular obligation to protect it. Both may value the place, yet the first statement points to identity: a relationship with the natural world that enters a person’s sense of self. Environmental identity helps explain why ecological issues can feel personal and why an environmental loss may be experienced as more than a change in scenery. It does not guarantee that someone will act sustainably, nor does it turn a person who disagrees about policy into someone without care.
What environmental identity names
Susan Clayton proposed environmental identity as a conceptual and measurable sense of connection to nonhuman nature that can shape self-understanding. The idea includes memories, emotions, beliefs, and social experiences. It is broader than liking a particular park and narrower than a claim that all of nature is literally part of the self. Identity can be strong in one context and less salient in another. The concept helps ask how nature enters a life story and a social role, rather than merely counting time spent outdoors.
Environmental identity overlaps with nature connectedness and environmental self-identity, but the terms are not perfect synonyms. Nature connectedness often measures a felt relationship or inclusion of nature in the self. Environmental self-identity can emphasize seeing oneself as the kind of person who acts in environmentally friendly ways. Environmental identity can include both, along with place, meaning, and belonging. A review and meta-analysis by Balundė, Jovarauskaitė, and Poškus found substantial correlations among measures, with differences depending on instruments. High overlap is not proof of one identical construct.
A person’s environmental identity may form through repeated experience in a place, family practices, work, cultural teaching, or participation in conservation. It need not arise only from wilderness recreation. Someone who grows food, fishes, tends an urban tree, or defends clean air may connect identity to very different environments. A measure that assumes one idealized form of nature can miss these relationships. Researchers and practitioners should ask what “environment” means in the setting being studied.
Identity is also social. A person’s group may treat care for land as a shared responsibility, a marker of belonging, or a source of conflict. Clayton and Opotow’s edited volume placed environmental identity along a continuum of social influence, emphasizing that nature-related self-understanding is not simply a private feeling. Public disputes can threaten valued ways of life on several sides. Recognizing this helps explain why more scientific facts alone may not resolve a disagreement about a place.
Measurement and its limits
Researchers often ask people to rate statements about their relationship to nature or their environmentally friendly self-image. Such scales can reveal patterns across samples, but answers depend on wording, culture, and the social desirability of the topic. A person may endorse “I care about nature” without sharing a researcher’s interpretation of that phrase. Another may practice stewardship without adopting the language of environmentalism. Measurement must be interpreted in relation to the population and the actions of interest.
Balundė and colleagues’ analysis found that the observed relation between nature connectedness and environmental identity varied by whether connection was measured graphically or with questionnaires. That variation matters because a correlation between two scales can be inflated when they ask similar questions in similar formats. A researcher should inspect the items before concluding that two concepts are interchangeable. A construct is useful when it helps make a meaningful distinction, not simply when its score correlates with a neighboring score.
Environmental self-identity is sometimes inferred from past behavior. A person who repeatedly cycles to work may begin to see themselves as someone who makes low-impact choices. Van der Werff, Steg, and Keizer studied how biospheric values and reminders of past environmental behavior related to environmental self-identity and later judgments or intentions. The findings suggest that identity is not entirely fixed. Their studies do not show that reminding anyone of one good act will cause broad, lasting behavior change. The effect depends on the behavior, context, and how identity is measured.
A behavioral measure is not automatically better than a self-report. Recycling once may reflect an available bin rather than a deep commitment; not recycling may reflect inaccessible infrastructure rather than indifference. The same action can have different meanings in different systems. A fuller study can combine self-description, choices across contexts, and structural opportunities. Even then, it should avoid claiming access to a person’s “true” identity from a small set of observations.
Identity and action are related, not equivalent
Whitburn, Linklater, and Abrahamse meta-analyzed studies of connection to nature and pro-environmental behavior and found a positive association across 37 samples. Their review also found that measurement choices explained important variation. The association supports the relevance of nature connection but cannot by itself show that increasing identity causes a corresponding change in behavior. People who already act sustainably may feel more connected; shared values and opportunities may influence both.
A separate meta-analysis of connection to nature and pro-environmental behavior compared correlational and experimental evidence. It found stronger associations in correlational studies and weaker experimental effects, with publication-bias concerns among experiments. This is a crucial boundary. A campaign that raises a nature-connection score for a week cannot assume that travel, energy use, or civic behavior will change at the same magnitude. Causal claims need interventions, suitable comparison groups, and outcomes that matter outside the questionnaire.
Identity may make an action feel coherent. A person who sees river protection as part of their community role may volunteer when a local project appears. Yet action still depends on cost, available time, transport, laws, and trust in institutions. It is unfair to treat a low-impact choice as a pure measure of virtue when alternatives are inaccessible. Environmental identity is one possible influence within a larger social and material system. It cannot substitute for usable infrastructure or effective policy.
Identity can motivate more than consumption choices. It may support attention to local ecology, political participation, caregiving for a place, or willingness to learn from others. These outcomes should be distinguished in research. A scale that predicts household recycling may not predict support for a complicated land-use decision. Broad claims about “green behavior” can hide very different actions, each with its own constraints and consequences. The relevant behavior should be specified before assessing an identity link.
Place, culture, and difference
A familiar landscape can anchor memory and belonging. Environmental identity therefore intersects with place attachment, but it is not reducible to one place. Someone may feel connected to forests broadly while having little attachment to a particular trail. Another may care deeply for one neighborhood green space without endorsing a general environmental self-label. These distinctions matter in planning and communication. A proposal to change a place can be heard as a threat to a relationship, not merely a change in amenities.
People can hold several identities at once. A parent may value clean air, a worker may rely on an industry, and a resident may fear losing local livelihoods. These commitments can conflict without any one of them being insincere. An identity-based message that says “people like us always support this policy” may erase legitimate tradeoffs and alienate those it hopes to engage. Listening for the roles and obligations people describe is often more informative than sorting them into pro- and anti-environmental groups.
Culture affects how relationships with land, water, and other beings are described. Some communities may frame care through kinship, duty, livelihood, or spiritual practice rather than individual identity. Importing a survey built around Western individual self-description can miss those forms of relation. Researchers should test language and meaning with the people studied and avoid using one scale as a universal standard of ecological concern. A concept can travel across settings only if its interpretation is examined rather than assumed.
Identity is not a moral ranking. Someone can score highly on a nature-connection questionnaire while acting in ways that have a large environmental footprint. Someone else may score lower yet support effective public measures. A person’s resources and structural options shape the action that is possible. The point of studying identity is to understand one route through which meaning and behavior connect, not to declare who is a good environmental citizen.
How identity can change
Experiences can make a relationship with nature more salient, but change may be gradual. A child who learns the names of nearby birds may begin to notice seasonal patterns; an adult who helps restore a stream may incorporate that role into a self-story. A disaster or environmental loss can also alter identity, sometimes painfully. These examples are plausible pathways, not measured effects of a single program. A claim that an activity “builds environmental identity” should be tested with a clear outcome and appropriate follow-up.
Reminders of past action can reinforce a self-view, as van der Werff and colleagues examined, but the content of the action matters. If a campaign celebrates a token gesture while obscuring larger structural harms, it may produce satisfaction without meaningful change. Conversely, an identity message that demands perfect consistency can create shame and withdrawal when people cannot meet it. Supportive communication can acknowledge imperfect action and invite a concrete next step while keeping the scale of the problem visible.
Schools and community programs can offer opportunities to know a place through observation, care, and conversation. They should not require a learner to profess a prescribed identity. A student may learn ecology deeply while feeling ambivalent about a local conservation proposal. The educational goal can be understanding and capacity for reasoned action, with identity allowed to develop in the learner’s own terms. Assessment of knowledge should remain separate from measurement of personal affiliation.
Organizations can create conditions for environmental action without using identity language at all. A workplace can reduce waste, make lower-impact travel practical, and invite staff into decisions. Those changes may align with people’s existing values and possibly influence self-understanding over time. Their immediate merit should be judged by their environmental and human effects, not by whether a survey score rises. Identity can be one outcome among others, not the sole target.
Environmental identity can also be politically expressed without taking the form of private lifestyle change. A resident may join a campaign for cleaner water while making few visible household changes. Another may reduce personal consumption yet avoid collective action because public disagreement feels risky. These patterns are not contradictions to be scored away. They show that identity can be enacted through different roles and that access to action is unequally distributed. Research should state which action it measures before drawing conclusions about the strength or meaning of an identity.
Using the concept responsibly
A useful question is “What relationship does this person or community say they have with this environment?” The answer may concern livelihood, childhood memory, health, species, duty, or beauty. The researcher can then ask how that relationship bears on a particular decision, rather than presuming that identity predicts a fixed policy preference. This approach treats identity as situated evidence about meaning. It also leaves room for people to revise their views when new facts or circumstances arise.
When evaluating an intervention, separate three outcomes: how participants describe themselves, what actions they take, and what environmental effects follow. A rise in the first may or may not produce the second; the second may or may not produce a large third outcome. The connection-to-nature meta-analyses make that distinction especially important because much of the evidence is correlational or self-reported. Strong causal claims require direct evidence at each link.
A careful public message can make space for several relationships with nature. It can say what is at stake in a concrete place, who is affected, what choices are available, and where uncertainty remains. It should avoid telling people that a single identity is the only authentic way to care. The concept is most useful when it opens inquiry into belonging and responsibility, rather than closing debate by assigning labels.
What the evidence does not show
The evidence does not show that environmental identity is one universal trait, that a high score guarantees sustainable action, or that changing a self-description will reliably cause broad environmental improvement. Measures overlap with nature connectedness and environmental self-identity but are sensitive to wording and method. Meta-analytic associations are informative while causal intervention effects appear smaller and less certain. Cultural meanings, opportunities, and policy conditions remain important.
The wetland can be part of someone’s self-understanding and still require public decisions that consider many people and other living beings. Environmental identity helps explain why those decisions can carry personal weight. It asks us to notice the relationships behind a preference while testing what follows from them. That is a richer starting point than assuming that care, identity, and action are the same thing.
Research references
- Clayton, S. (2003). Environmental identity: A conceptual and an operational definition. In S. Clayton & S. Opotow (Eds.), Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature. MIT Press. View source
- Balundė, A., Jovarauskaitė, L., & Poškus, M. S. (2019). Exploring the relationship between connectedness with nature, environmental identity, and environmental self-identity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. SAGE Open, 9(2). View source
- van der Werff, E., Steg, L., & Keizer, K. (2014). I am what I am, by looking past the present: The influence of biospheric values and past behavior on environmental self-identity. Environment and Behavior, 46(5). View source
- Whitburn, J., Linklater, W., & Abrahamse, W. (2020). Meta-analysis of human connection to nature and proenvironmental behavior. Conservation Biology, 34(1), 180–193. View source
- Mackay, C. M. L., & Schmitt, M. T. (2019). Do people who feel connected to nature do more to protect it? A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 65, 101323. View source