Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?

Iresha Jayasinghe; Rebekka Darner

doi:10.29333/ijese/9157

Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?

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Iresha Jayasinghe ¹ , Rebekka Darner ² ^*

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¹ The Ohio State University, USA² Illinois State University, USA^* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Understanding human treatment towards nature provides insight into mitigating human induced environmental issues. This study determines whether individuals’ relationships with nature (NR), emotions experienced during evidence evaluation, and conservation concern drive evaluation of scientific arguments made about biodiversity conservation. Although we predicted that participants with strong NR would exhibit motivated reasoning, resulting in strong argument-evaluation skills as they evaluate an anti-conservation argument, we found that participants’ emotions during evidence evaluation were more predictive of their argument-evaluation skills. Further, participants with either low or high conservation concern demonstrated better argumentation skills. These findings suggest that while fostering strong relationships with nature may be important, of greater importance is to address emotions experienced when evaluating evidence. Furthermore, this study indicates a possibility that one’s reasoning about arguments made about biodiversity conservation may be motivated by how important one deems conservation to be.

Keywords

Conservation education
nature relatedness
emotion
scientific argumentation
motivated reasoning

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED, Volume 17, Issue 1, 2021, Article No: e2230

https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157

Publication date: 13 Nov 2020

Article Views: 2330

Article Downloads: 1584

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How to cite this article

APA

Jayasinghe, I., & Darner, R. (2021). Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 17(1), e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157

Vancouver

Jayasinghe I, Darner R. Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED. 2021;17(1):e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157

AMA

Jayasinghe I, Darner R. Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED. 2021;17(1), e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157

Chicago

Jayasinghe, Iresha, and Rebekka Darner. "Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?". Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education 2021 17 no. 1 (2021): e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157

Harvard

Jayasinghe, I., and Darner, R. (2021). Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 17(1), e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157

MLA

Jayasinghe, Iresha et al. "Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?". Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, vol. 17, no. 1, 2021, e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157