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Abstract
The sense of place (SOP) conceptual framework offers theoretical and empirical evidence that links peoples’ multifaceted connections to place(s) to their engagement in pro-environmental and conservation behaviors. The bulk of this research has focused on peoples’ connection to high-amenity places and landscapes. Recent research applies SOP in working landscapes—however, these studies encounter “troubles” that include measurement challenges and mixed results in predicting statistical relationships with conservation outcome variables. As authors of some of these studies, we propose three opportunities and corresponding survey items for developing meaningful SOP measures in future working landscapes research: (1) modify existing SOP dimensions and items to better capture the working landscape dynamics; (2) address how scale may affect behavior and SOP dimensions; and (3) incorporate a conservation ethic dimension into the SOP framework in working lands.
Acknowledgements
Our Indiana research was conducted through the Dr. Linda S. Prokopy Natural Resources Social Science Lab at Purdue University with funding from the Indiana Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (Ulrich-Schad, Church, and Prokopy Citation2016) and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act Section 319 program (Mullendore, Ulrich-Schad, and Prokopy Citation2015). Our Wyoming and Colorado research (Cross et al. Citation2011) was conducted with funding from USDA-NRI: Grant# 2005-35401-16008 with assistance from NASS for survey administration. Our northeastern U.S. research (Eaton et al. Citation2018) was conducted with Dr. C. Clare Hinrichs and Dr. Theresa Selfa with funding from the Northeast Woody/Warm-season Biomass Consortium (NEWBio). NEWBio is supported by AFRI Competitive Grant No. 2012-68005-19703 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Our funding sources had no role in study design, interpretation of data, or the decision to submit this article for publication. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.