Florin Popa

Motivations for committed nature conservation action in Europe

Despite ongoing efforts to motivate politicians and publics in Europe regarding nature conservation, biodiversity continues to decline. Monetary valuation of ecosystem services appears to be insufficient to motivate people, suggesting that non-monetary values have a crucial role to play. There is insufficient information about the motivations of actors who have been instrumental in successful conservation projects. We investigated the motivations underlying these biodiversity actors using the ranking of cards and compared the results with the rankings of motivations of a second group of actors with more socially related interests. For both groups of actors, their action relating to biodiversity was supported in general by two groups of motivations related to living a meaningful life and moral values. The non-biodiversity actors also noted that their action relating to biodiversity rested more on beauty, place attachment and intrinsic values in comparison with their main non-biodiversity interests. Our results have implications for environmental policy and biodiversity conservation in that the current tendency of focusing on the economic valuation of biodiversity fails to address the motivations of successful actors, thereby failing to motivate nature conservation on an individual level.

What makes you a 'hero' for nature? Socio-psychological profiling of leaders committed to nature and biodiversity protection across seven EU countries

Biodiversity loss is a widely debated world problem, with huge economic, social, and environmentally negative consequences. Despite the relevance of this issue, the psychological determinants of committed action towards nature and biodiversity have rarely been investigated. This study aims at identifying a comprehensive social-psychological profile of activists committed to biodiversity protection and at understanding what determinants best predict their activism. A questionnaire investigating relevant social-psychological constructs identified in the literature on environmental activism was administered to 183 outstanding leaders (vs. non-leaders) in biodiversity protection across seven EU countries. Leaders (vs. non-leaders) in biodiversity protection showed, among other constructs, higher scores on environmental values, attitudes, identity, perceived control, a feeling of union and spirituality with nature, and willingness to sacrifice for their cause. Results are discussed within the theoretical framework of a motivation model of committed action for nature and biodiversity protection. Applications of the results are also proposed.

Reflexive Methodological Pluralism

This article argues that methodological pluralism (MP) can benefit from a deeper and more systematic integration of reflexive processes. In particular, reflexivity can facilitate meaningful and problem-specific ways of combining methods across different disciplinary fields, types of expertise, and practices. To develop our argument, we distinguish between two dimensions of reflexivity: critical (questioning of values, assumptions, and sociopolitical context underlying research methodology) and transformative (investigating pathways for change by mobilizing social experimentation and learning). We discuss two cases of research on environmental valuation that mobilizes reflexivity. We conclude by emphasizing the specific role of critical and transformative reflexivity in guiding methodological choices.

Methodological Pluralism in Sustainability Research: A Critical-Reflexive Approach

Investigating and solving complex sustainability issues requires a reconsideration of the way scientific knowledge is produced and the way it interacts with policy-making and the broader social environment. This engages both the intellectual and the social organization of research. In particular, we focus on the role of problem framing and of the socio-normative background of research (assumptions, values, norms, institutional and technological context) in shaping scientific methodology.The prevalent explanatory frameworks in sustainability research are largely guided by descriptive-analytical goals and pay relatively little attention to the transformational dimension of science (Wiek et al. 2012). Integrating this transformational level into scientific practice can potentially have a normative benefit (by way of a critical deliberation on what values and aims should guide research), but also an epistemic benefit (insofar as the implicit normative commitments and social constraints guiding research are brought into the open, and thus their methodological contributions are clarified). Through a critical-reflexive approach, based on explicit acknowledgement and critical deliberation on the values, assumptions and social context of scientific practice, sustainability research can be carried out on a more solid epistemological and normative foundation. We illustrate the normative and epistemic potential of this approach by focusing on environmental valuation methods and the assumptions and values underlying them.