Connectedness to nature scale

The connectedness to nature scale (CNS) is a measure of individuals' trait levels of feeling emotionally connected to the natural world in the realm of social and environmental psychology. The CNS was “designed to tap an individual’s affective, experiential connection to nature.”^[1] The concept of connectedness to nature signifies the relationship between an individual and the environment.^[2] In brief, the scale intends to measure the level to which an individual feels connected with the natural world. Mayer and Frantz^[1] describe the CNS as a reliable, single-factored, multi-item scale that is easy to administer.

Theory and development

Study 2 looked at whether the CNS is in fact associated with ecological behaviors. The researchers report that this study provided strong evidence that the CNS is related to ecological behavior. The researchers also looked for divergent validity in Study 2, and the results showed that the CNS does not correlate with academic tests, such as the SAT, showing its divergent validity.

The goals of Study 3 were to test if the CNS could predict real life decisions and to further establish the validity. The researchers hypothesized that students studying environmental studies would score higher than psychology, math, or chemistry students since the former are already showing motivation to study the environment. The authors report in their discussion of the results that the CNS does in fact capture a personality trait that is relevant in real life decisions. A factor analysis was done in Study 3 and it differed from Studies 1 and 2, suggesting an inconsistency in factor structure.

The goals of Study 4 were to investigate how the CNS explains the motivations behind positive ecological behavior and to compare the CNS to more current work on the subject of well-being. The researchers also hypothesized that the CNS would correlate with life satisfaction and also with biospheric values. They were trying to provide more predictive validity for the CNS. Results showed that the CNS did correlate with a measure of life satisfaction as well as a measure of biospheric value orientation.

In Study 5, their hypothesis was that there would only be moderate correlations between the CNS, INS, and IAT—the latter two scales both being other measures of one's connection to nature—showing incremental validity for the CNS. Results showed only a single factor as in Studies 1 and 2. The CNS correlated moderately with the INS (r= .55, p= <.001), so no real incremental validity was shown here. The CNS correlated marginally with the IAT (r= .27, p= .07), so incremental validity was shown here.^[1] Beery ^[4] also confirmed the scale's high internal validity (α=0.84) and its high test-retest reliability (r=0.79).

According to Mayer and Frantz, the CNS can be utilized for a multitude of purposes: to monitor the extent to which activists are succeeding in endorsing essential changes, to evaluate whether interventions intended to increase peoples’ contact with nature actually do increase their sense of connection with nature, and even for “assessing the impact of architectural factors, such as windows looking out onto natural settings, on connection to nature.”^[1]

In 2011, Cervinka, Roderer, and Hefler

Zhang, Howell, and Iyer[7] designed a study to test the hypothesis that connectedness to nature is related to psychological well-being, as proposed by Mayer and Frantz.^[1] The researchers used the Engagement with Natural Beauty Scale to test this hypothesis and to measure participants’ tendencies to be stimulated by nature's beauty. Zhang and colleagues ^[7] found that the positive relationship between connected with nature and psychological well-being was only significant for participants who regularly engage with nature's beauty. This suggests that the CNS may not be a significant predictor of psychological well-being, unless the participant engages with nature.^[1] People who are more emotionally involved/attuned to nature and its beauty are the people who gain the most benefits from being connected with nature, and the controversy is that the CNS will pick up on these people,^[7] but may not pick up on those who are not connected with nature.

Measuring connectedness to nature in young children

The urgency to measure Connectedness to Nature (CN) construct early in life is obvious, but no simple tools are available to do so at this young age. Many try but fail to measure the modules of relevant interventions, namely Connectedness to Nature, facing a problem evaluating early environmental educations programmes targeting younger children.

A new 16-item parent questionnaire (CNI-PPC) to measure “connectedness to nature’ in very young children has been recently developed by Sobko and Brown.^[8] The original CN Index was modified and tested among Parents of Preschool Children (CNI-PPC) in an urban setting (Hong Kong) for its internal consistency and external validity. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the 16-item scale adequately captures four major dimensions: enjoyment of nature, empathy for nature, sense of responsibility, awareness of nature. The new questionnaire was tested against the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, a well-established measurement of psychological well-being and children's behaviour problems. The results revealed that the children who had a closer connection with nature had less distress, less hyperactivity, & fewer behavioural and emotional difficulties, and improved pro-social behaviour. Interestingly, children who took greater responsibility towards the nature had fewer peer difficulties. The results give a new possibility for investigating the link between the outdoor environment and well-being in pre-school children. Thus, CNI-PPC factors have meaningful and substantive associations with the strengths and difficulties parents perceived in their children. This indicates the CNI-PPC is a valid and reliable instrument to measure CN at an age when children cannot respond themselves. Further, this simple tool could help researchers/practitioners to better understand how the connectedness to nature affect child psychological functioning and wellbeing.

References