Caring for the Earth: Generativity as a Mediator for the Prediction of Environmental Narratives from Identity Among Activists and Nonactivists

Abstract

Although some earlier research has highlighted both the importance of generativity and feelings of a close personal connection with nature for environmental engagement, the role of these factors has not been studied in a narrative identity context. Thus, in this study, the interrelationships among narrative and questionnaire features of environmental identity and generative concern were evaluated using a mixed methods design. Features of environmental stories told by 54 environmental activists and a comparison sample of 56 nonactivists (aged 17 to 59 years) were examined in relation to standard self-report measures of environmental identity, behavior, and generativity. In addition to these quantitative measures, participants told five environmental narratives that were coded for vividness, meaning making, and impact on engagement. A summary index of these narrative codes distinguished the activists and was positively related to environmental and generative questionnaire measures. A situated environmental identity appeared to serve as a foundation for narrative engagement with the environment; however, results also highlighted generativity as a key mediating factor in this relationship across youth and midlife participants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Portions of this research were reported at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development in Montreal, ON, March 2011, and at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence in Vancouver, BC, March 2012. The authors thank Elise Bisson, Eva Prkachin, Sean Mackinnon, and Erika Mohle for help with data collection and coding; Feliciano Villar for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article; and the participants of this study for their willingness to share with us their stories and passion for the environment.

Notes

¹This resulted in the removal of five participants from the nonactivist category.

²More detailed coding information is available from the authors.

³As a means of establishing discriminant validity, we performed additional analyses to examine two nonenvironmental work stories. These analyses indicated that the vividness and meaning-making ratings for activists' narrations about a work scene and a work turning point scene did not differ from those of nonactivists, lending support to the domain specificity of the findings described in this article (Thériault, Bisson, Alisat, & Pratt, 2011).