People’s Environmental Stewardship Elements Framed Through Sense of Place

Abstract

Indianapolis, Indiana is a sprawling city making it an exceptional locale to pursue environmental learning and stewardship research, particularly in the urban context. To achieve improved understanding of people’s attitudes and behaviors towards their natural environment and resources, research was conducted on different local populations of Indianapolis and surrounding metropolitan area. The research’s overall aim was to provide greater insight through sense of place on environmental perceptions and actions. The studied subpopulations included families, community members, and young adults and utilized mixed methods to frame inquiry. The qualitative and quantitative data approaches, such as survey instruments and semi-structured interviews, provided multiple avenues of results that could be corroborated to strengthen and confirm outcomes. Each project investigated how people perceive their responsibilities and participate in aspects that are important to environmental sustainability while also identifying potential driving mechanisms for their current and potential behaviors. Extant literature proposes that sense of place can affect a number of dimensions including people’s environmental intentions and behaviors. The context of each project considered how sense of place theory intertwined within the outcomes of environmental stewardship. Environmental stewardship is an important means for providing remediation and mitigation, as well as cultivating an ecologically responsible society. Families showed critical overlap in greater environmental awareness and action when topics were near respective residences and immediate surroundings, while informal interaction and formal intervention outlined how consequential messaging and experiential aspects can be when connecting people to resources or areas that are not considered home or familiar. The research suggests conclusive evidence on how to inform and guide on effective modes for producing environmental awareness, knowledge, and stewardship in order to build a more sustainable future.