INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND SCIENCE EDUCATION
Research Article
Nov 13, 2020 1156 756

Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?

Iresha Jayasinghe 1,
Rebekka Darner 2 *
1 The Ohio State University, USA2 Illinois State University, USA* Corresponding Author
Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 2021, 17(1), e2230, https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/9157
Full Text (PDF)

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

CITATION (APA)

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
Harvard
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
Vancouver
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
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
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
MLA
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

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