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Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education

Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?
Iresha Jayasinghe 1, Rebekka Darner 2 *
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1 The Ohio State University, USA
2 Illinois State University, USA
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Research Article

Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 2021 - Volume 17 Issue 1, Article No: e2230
https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157

Published Online: 13 Nov 2020

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How to cite this article
APA 6th edition
In-text citation: (Jayasinghe & Darner, 2021)
Reference: Jayasinghe, I., & Darner, R. (2021). Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 17(1), e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157
Vancouver
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Jayasinghe I, Darner R. Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED. 2021;17(1):e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157
AMA 10th edition
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Jayasinghe I, Darner R. Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED. 2021;17(1), e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157
Chicago
In-text citation: (Jayasinghe and Darner, 2021)
Reference: Jayasinghe, Iresha, and Rebekka Darner. "Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?". Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education 2021 17 no. 1 (2021): e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157
Harvard
In-text citation: (Jayasinghe and Darner, 2021)
Reference: Jayasinghe, I., and Darner, R. (2021). Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?. Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 17(1), e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157
MLA
In-text citation: (Jayasinghe and Darner, 2021)
Reference: Jayasinghe, Iresha et al. "Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?". Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, vol. 17, no. 1, 2021, e2230. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157
ABSTRACT
Understanding human treatment towards nature provides insight into mitigating human induced environmental issues. This study determines whether individuals’ relationships with nature (NR), emotions experienced during evidence evaluation, and conservation concern drive evaluation of scientific arguments made about biodiversity conservation. Although we predicted that participants with strong NR would exhibit motivated reasoning, resulting in strong argument-evaluation skills as they evaluate an anti-conservation argument, we found that participants’ emotions during evidence evaluation were more predictive of their argument-evaluation skills. Further, participants with either low or high conservation concern demonstrated better argumentation skills. These findings suggest that while fostering strong relationships with nature may be important, of greater importance is to address emotions experienced when evaluating evidence. Furthermore, this study indicates a possibility that one’s reasoning about arguments made about biodiversity conservation may be motivated by how important one deems conservation to be.
KEYWORDS
Conservation education nature relatedness emotion scientific argumentation motivated reasoning
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