Visions of nature and landscape type preferences: an exploration in The Netherlands

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Abstract

A survey was carried out among inhabitants of Gennep, a small-town municipality in the east of The Netherlands, questioning about (1) the types of nature that people distinguish and the levels of naturalness ascribed to these types of nature; (2) the images that people hold of the appropriate relationship between people and nature and the level of adherence to these images, and (3) people’s preference of broadly defined landscape types. Types of nature inferred by means of factor analysis were labeled arcadian, wild and penetrative nature, the last category comprising elements such as mosquitoes and rats in the barn. Factor analysis was used as well to infer images of appropriate relationship, which appeared to hinge around the concepts of mastery over nature, responsibility for nature and participation in nature, respectively. Levels of adherence to the responsibility and participation images were very high, indicative of a ‘new biophilia’ mainstream in Dutch culture.

Landscape types were defined, roughly, as (1) landscape made by and for people; (2) park-like, arcadian landscape; (3) wild, interactive landscape and (4) landscape “in which one may experience the greatness and forces of nature”. Strikingly, more than half of the respondents expressed preference for this last (‘deep ecology’) landscape type, with another third preferring the wild, interactive landscape. The highest preference of the ‘greatness and forces’ landscape was found among the respondents with high ascription of naturalness to the penetrative type of nature and respondents adhering to the participation-in-nature image of relationship.

Preferences for landscape types as defined here should be distinguished from visual or behavioral landscape preferences. Even if people may not select landscapes of the ‘greatness and forces of nature’ in daily behaviors, these landscapes of wilderness and greatness do connect with human visions and desires.

Introduction

In Western countries in general and in highly urbanized ones such as The Netherlands in particular, remarkable levels of nature-friendliness are currently found to exist within the general public. In surveys in Norway and Sweden, an average of 80% of the respondents acknowledge the intrinsic value of nature, that is, nature’s right to exist irrespective of its uses and functions for humankind (Grendstad and Wollebaek, 1998). In surveys in The Netherlands, this percentage is usually 90% or higher (Van den Born et al., 2001). This ‘new biophilia’, as it is sometimes called, may be hypothicated as a new cultural phase of the Western societies, that is now succeeding the previous phases of nature’s conquest and domestication (De Groot, 1999).

Apart from this aspect of the value of nature, Van den Born et al. (2001) have coined the term ‘visions of nature’ as an umbrella that comprises two more elements:

  • the ‘images of nature’, defined as the types of nature that people distinguish, such as, in Western culture, wild nature or arcadian nature;

  • the ‘images of relationship’, defined as the images that people hold of the appropriate relationship between humans and nature, examples of which are dominion or guardianship.

Images of nature have been subject to empirical research before (see Section 3). The same holds for aspects of the people-nature relationship, e.g. between nature and health (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989, Frumkin, 2001), nature and children (Kahn, 1999, Nevers et al., 1997) and nature and farmers (Aarts, 1998, Kaltoft, 1999); Van den Born et al. (2001) give an overview. The more ethical/philosophical ‘images of relationship’ as defined above, however, are yet to be addressed empirically. The present paper will present the first results in this area.

‘Nature’ in these types of research is understood, roughly, as everything that lives or organizes itself outside humans and human decisions. The concept of ‘landscape’, on the other hand, usually stands for the sensory (most often visual) aspects of nature, artifacts and their mixtures, usually taken on a relatively large scale. Human preference for different landscapes has been the object of much literature, e.g. Coeterier (1987), Herzog et al. (2000) and Misgav (2000), that connects the visual qualities of landscapes with preference statements of respondents.

Nature-friendliness may sometimes be glimpsed indirectly from landscape preference research. Ulrich (1986) and Purcell and Lamb (1998), for instance, assert that the perceived degree of naturalness in landscapes is a powerful factor in the preference that people have for these landscapes; see Van den Berg (1999, p. 118) for group differences within this general picture. Respondents in these landscape-oriented surveys or interviews are not invited, however, to express their ideas about nature as such or their relationship with nature. Hence, no relationships between landscape preferences and views on nature may be established.

The present paper is designed to fill this gap. Our strategy has been to connect stated landscape preferences to the two aforementioned elements of Van den Born et al.’s (2001) visions of nature. These two elements concern relatively abstract categories and in order to arrive at a proper connection with the landscape concept, we have separated the landscape concept into categories that are likewise broad and abstract, hence without specific visual details such as openness, foliar density or foreground/background distinction, and without specific ecosystem content such as forest, wetland, grassland or sea. The landscapes thus defined, of which we have distinguished only four, are here called ‘landscape types’.

Thus, our main research questions were: (1) What images of nature do people distinguish? (2) What images of the appropriate relationship with nature do people distinguish? (3) What preference do people have for landscape types? (4) How do these preferences relate to the images of nature and the images of the appropriate relationship with nature that people adhere to?

Below, the next section introduces the methodology. 3 Images of nature, 4 Images of the people-nature relationship, 5 Landscape type preferences then report on the results of the first three research questions separately, and Section 6 presents the interconnections. Section 7 summarizes these results and Section 8 gives the overall discussion and conclusion.

Section snippets

Research approach and method

With respect to the images of nature (research question 1), a quantitative research method has been well established (see below), and many data are already available. The component was included, however, in order to establish the relationships with the images of relationship (research question 2) and the landscape type preferences (research question 3).

The latter two research questions have never been addressed empirically yet. The obvious advantage of this situation is that in terms of

Images of nature

The scree-plot of the factor analysis indicated that a distinction between four factors (images of nature) yields the most significant classification. Table 1 shows the factor scores through which items are grouped together by the factor analysis, as well as the average levels of naturalness ascribed to these images. The latter levels were calculated by assigning 2 to “full”, 1 to “a bit” and 0 to “no” association with real nature.

We named the first group of items, headed by the lambs in the

Images of the people-nature relationship

The scree-plot of the factor analysis indicated that a distinction between three or four factors (images of relationship) yields the most significant classification. Since we had generated our questionnaire items basically from four images (technocrat-adventurer and manager-engineer, steward and guardian, partner, and participant), our preference was for the four-factor solution. It turned out, however, that although the two extremes of this set were readily interpretable, the middle two were

Landscape type preferences

In the survey, respondents were asked to indicate one preference between four landscape types. In literal translation, the questionnaire items were:

  • 1.

    A well-ordered landscape, made by and for people.

  • 2.

    A varied, park-like landscape.

  • 3.

    Untamed nature, with which one may have many interactions.

  • 4.

    A landscape in which one may experience the greatness and forces of nature.

Following De Groot (1999), the first of these items was designed to appeal to the strongly anthropocentric (‘Adventurer and Exploiter’)

Associations of landscape type preferences with visions of nature

In this section, the associations are described between landscape type preferences on the one hand and visions of nature, i.e. the levels of naturalness that respondents ascribe to elements of their environment, and their ideas of the appropriate relationship between people and nature, on the other hand. Based on the theoretical notions put forward in the previous sections, a number of associations were expected, e.g. (1) association of the idea that arcadian nature is natural with preference

Summarizing conclusion

In the foregoing, it has been shown that people in Gennep distinguish between a consistent set of images of nature such as arcadian nature and wild nature. Levels of naturalness ascribed to wild nature elements were 1.90 on a scale running between 0 and 2. On that same scale, elements of ‘penetrative nature’ such as mosquitoes or rats in the barn still have an ascribed level of naturalness of 1.27, indicating that respondents have a wider view on nature than including only what is nice and

Discussion

Van den Berg (1999: p. 63) studied the association of two variables allied to the images of relationship and the landscape type preference. Related to the images of relationship, a degree of ecocentricity was measured by means of the widely used NEP scale (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1978). Related to the landscape type preferences, Van den Berg measured preferences for photographed landscapes. Contrary to our results, no association of the two variables was found. One reason may be, as Van den Berg

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Grietje Maters for the data gathering and Otto Hermkens for the support in the data analysis.

Wouter T. de Groot started out as a civil engineer, worked in Kenya and moved into environmental science in the 1970s, teaching and publishing in the fields of environmental ecology, economics, philosophy, methodology, land use theory and social science. He now is professor in social environmental science at the Leiden and Nijmegen Universities, The Netherlands.

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    Wouter T. de Groot started out as a civil engineer, worked in Kenya and moved into environmental science in the 1970s, teaching and publishing in the fields of environmental ecology, economics, philosophy, methodology, land use theory and social science. He now is professor in social environmental science at the Leiden and Nijmegen Universities, The Netherlands.

    Riyan J.G. van den Born has a masters in social environmental science and now teaches this discipline at Nijmegen University; her work focuses on visions of nature and rural issues.

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