How Can Relational Values Add to the Dichotomy of Instrumental and Intrinsic Values?
Who Cares?
The global population is currently tackling many dire environmental issues on a large scale, not to mention the looming consequences of climate change to come. For the sake of future conservation efforts, it may be valuable to greater understand how people’s relationship with nature can influence the adoption of sustainable perspectives. Breaking the dichotomy would offer more freedom in conservation discussions than the simple intrinsic or instrumental perspectives.
Definitions
Intrinsic value: refers to nature's inherent value independent of its uses to humans, non-anthropocentric.
Instrumental value: referring to the value of nature due to its uses to humans.
Relational value: refers to the importance that pertains to a relationship with an aspect of nature deemed non-substitutable, classified as anthropocentric yet non-instrumental, meaning the focus is on the relationship between people and the non-substitutable resource.
Short Literature Review
The dichotomy of instrumental and intrinsic value goes back to the early stages of environmentalism with Aldo Leopold and his conservation ethic.
Relational values are an extremely new development in the context of environmental ethics. Previous reviews have found 312 unique relationships including identity, livelihoods, and human/place/nature connection.
Inducing empathy is an effective method for garnering monetary support for environmental groups; however, simply presenting images is not enough to motivate action and additional messages must be paired with the images to invoke empathetic responses and action.
Theory of Reasoned Action
Following Ford's model, someone will value an object in the forest, such as old growth or regrowth forest. People will then develop an awareness of the consequences of forest practices for these valued objects, which will in turn lead to judgements about their acceptability.
Essentially, our actions are based off of the expected consequences of an event.
Methods
Search used the keywords, “relational values” and “conservation” in the databases: Academic Search Ultimate, Environment Complete, GreenFILE and Social Science Full Text (H.W. Wilson).
Used the references to snowball sources to ensure I can reach a broad and inclusive review of the subject as there is very limited pool of information related to the subject so looking through the citations of each source gathers a sufficient amount of sources.
References
Adger, W. N., Butler, C., & Walker-Springett, K. (2017). Moral reasoning in adaptation to climate change. Environmental Politics, 26(3), 371–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2017.1287624
Bataille, C. Y., Luke, K., Kruger, T., Malinen, S., Allen, R. B., Whitehead, A. L., & Lyver, P. O. ’B. (2020). Stakeholder values inform Indigenous Peoples’ Governance and management of a former National Park in New Zealand. Human Ecology, 48(4), 439–453. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00170-4
Brown, K., Adger, W. N., Devine-Wright, P., Anderies, J. M., Barr, S., Bousquet, F., Butler, C., Evans, L., Marshall, N., & Quinn, T. (2019). Empathy, place and identity interactions for Sustainability. Global Environmental Change, 56, 11–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.03.003
Ford, R. M., Williams, K. J. H., Bishop, I. D., & Webb, T. (2009). A value basis for the social acceptability of Clearfelling in Tasmania, Australia. Landscape and Urban Planning, 90(3–4), 196–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2008.11.006
Hagen, E. J., & Gould, R. K. (2022). Relational values and empathy are closely connected: A study of residents of Vermont’s Winooski River Watershed. Ecology and Society, 27(3). https://doi.org/10.5751/es-13406-270319
Himes, A., & Muraca, B. (2018). Relational values: The key to pluralistic valuation of ecosystem services. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 35, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.09.005
Ivakhiv, A. (2007). Nature and ethnicity in East European paganism. Pomegranate, 7(2), 194–225. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v7i2.194
Lee, J.-W., Park, S.-R., & Lee, S.-W. (2023). Effect of land use on stream water quality and biological conditions in multi-scale watersheds. Water, 15(24), 4210. https://doi.org/10.3390/w15244210
Pratson, D. F., Adams, N., & Gould, R. K. (2023). Relational values of nature in empirical research: A systematic review. People and Nature, 5(5), 1464–1479. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10512
Swim, J. K., & Bloodhart, B. (2014). Portraying the perils to polar bears: The role of empathic and objective perspective-taking toward animals in climate change communication. Environmental Communication, 9(4), 446–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2014.987304
