Connecting with Country in Mungo National Park, Australia: a case study to measure the emotional dimension of experience and place attachment

ABSTRACT

Connecting people with nature improves well-being, but how people connect with natural places is not well documented. We asked 43 people (19 Aboriginal Australians, 24 non-Aboriginal people) about the messages they received from Country during an interactive experience in the remote Mungo National Park, Australia, and analysed the physical senses, emotions and cognitive processes they mentioned. The physical senses mentioned by most respondents were sight, hearing and motion (particularly walking). These senses helped people receive messages from Country and connect with place. We used the primary-process emotional systems of Panksepp [2010. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 12 (4), 533–545] as a framework to capture the emotional dimension of experience. Most people reported positive emotions; they spoke about being nurtured by the group and the land (CARE), and the intense joy (PLAY) of being part of the community, being on Country and being accompanied by Aboriginal people. However, our results indicate the framework does not capture the breadth of positive emotions, particularly those associated with connection to place and spiritual experiences. Both groups mentioned cognitive processes reflecting their beliefs, existing knowledge, or sharing and acquiring new knowledge. Our results indicate that the emotional dimension of experience has the potential to measure connection to place, and provide a subjective measure of well-being. More research is needed to document this dimension of experience, and how it changes with context. Our case study provides further insight for those who manage protected areas and seek to enrich the experience of visitors.

KEYWORDS:

• Place attachment
• park
• Aboriginal
• emotions
• well-being

Acknowledgements

We thank the Mutthi Mutthi, Ngyiampaa and Paakantji people for their contribution and partnership in this work. We thank the organisers of Mildura Palimpsest for inviting us to take part, everyone who responded so generously to our questions and NPWS for supporting this initiative. We also thank Ian Shannon, OEH, for support with statistical analyses. The anonymous reviewers greatly improved this manuscript with their thoughtful and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

C. Louise Goggin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4211-624X

Patricia M. Please http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1618-6682

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) and Western Local Land Services.