Janet Buttolph Johnson

Connectivity With Nature as a Measure of Environmental Values

The authors hypothesize that environmental values derive from a sense of connectivity with nature. Connectivity describes a perception of sameness between the self, others, and the natural world. The experience of connectivity involves dissolution of boundaries and a sense of a shared or common essence between the self, nature, and others. Connectivity with nature differs theoretically and operationally from other explanations of environmental values, including cultural bias, postmaterialism, and social altruism. The authors describe their development of a sociometric scale to operationalize connectivity with nature. Based on data from a mail survey of Pennsylvania landowners, the authors use multiple regression analyses to determine the extent to which connectivity with nature predicts and explains environmental concern and behavior in the presence of standard sociodemographic variables. Survey respondents reported a high level of connectivity with nature, and connectivity retained a significant and positive relationship to environmental concern and environmental behavior in multiple regression models. Implications of these findings are advanced.

Landowner Perceptions of Protecting and Establishing Riparian Forests: A Qualitative Analysis

While the ecological importance of riparian forests is widely recognized, identifying the best policies for reforesting privately owned stream lands also requires an understanding of societal perceptions. Forty semistructured interviews with riparian landowners in central Pennsylvania revealed a study population driven by competing considerations. On one hand, these landowners expressed a community obligation to consider the downstream consequences of their management styles. On the other, they often failed to appreciate their own contributions to water pollution and were reluctant to abandon the ordered landscapes to which they were accustomed. Possible implications of these findings are advanced.

Tourist Viewshed Externalities and Wind Energy Production

This study uses an experiment where ferry passengers are sold hotel room “views” to evaluate the impact of wind turbines views on tourists’ vacation experience. Participants purchase a chance for a weekend hotel stay. Information about the hotel rooms was limited to the quality of the hotel and its distance from a large wind turbine, as well as whether or not a particular room would have a view of the turbine. While there was generally a negative effect of turbine views, this did not hold across all participants, and did not seem to be effected by distance or hotel quality.

An Airing of the Clean Air Act

In recent years criticism of excessive and inefficient regulation has frequently been voiced. Environmental regulations in particular have been a target. Some critics charge that environmental benefits have been pursued too aggressively without sufficient regard to the cost of controls. Others, without attacking the desirability of the benefits, argue that pollution reduction has been unnecessarily costly. Yet there are also those who claim that antipollution legislation has not been implemented sufficiently and effectively and that progress toward air and water quality goals has been disappointingly slow. Causes of these problems, depending on the source of the criticism, include failure to incorporate economic rationality and economic incentives into regulations, overzealous regulators, weak enforcement efforts, and insufficient funding to support timely and effective implementation of complex statutes. These conflicting viewpoints are part of the debate currently surrounding the Clean Air Act whose reauthorization by Congress is considerably behind schedule. Reauthorization of the act has been held up by conflict over proposals to add acid rain control measures and proposals to change existing provisions. Each of the books under review offers a timely opportunity for an increased understanding of the crucial issues in the debate over the Clean Air Act. Each provides insight on important components of the act and its implementation. Among the subjects addressed by the authors are the administrative burden created by the numerous and complex requirements of the Clean Air Act, the impact of judicial review and public input on administrative decision making and air quality policy, and the application of principles of economic efficiency to air quality policy. The conclusions reached by the authors are sobering, provocative, and instructive.