Development and Initial Validation of a Measure of Ecopsychological Self

This paper reports on a study involving the development and initial validation of a scale designed to assess the concept of ecopsychological self. This concept can be defined as the extent to which individuals identify with nature. Using a sample of 150 university students, an 11 item instrument, comprised of two subscales (nature inclusive self-concept and nature stewardship) was constructed through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques. The instrument was found to have adequate inter-item reliability and satisfactory convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity. Correlational and regression analyses found that the two subscales were significant predictors of mental and spiritual well-being. The study concludes with a discussion of the findings, limitations of the study, and directions for future research. For at least a century, concerns have been raised about the impact of civilization on the natural world (e.g., Abbey, 1968; Brown, 2001; Leopold, 1948/1966; Muir, 1901/1976; Snyder, 1990). In the last few decades, the study of human/nature interaction has begun to be formalized. Hibbard (2003) identified four primary interrelated groups-ecophilosphy (Zimmerman, 1997), ecotheology (White, 1967), deep ecology (Naess, 1989), and ecofeminism (Warren, 1994)—that have contributed to a new area of study: ecopsychology. This term, coined by Roszak (1992), refers to the study of how human psychology and ecology interact in a powerful and deeply connected way. While ecopsychology shares an interest with a range of traditional psychological disciplines, most notably environmental psychology, it funda- mentally differs from these areas due to ecopsychologists' subscription to the tenet that humans are integrally connected to nature. As stated by Roszak (1995) ''…ecopsychology proceeds from the assumption that at its deepest level the psyche remains sympathetically bonded to the Earth that mothered us into existence'' (p. 5). In the context of this assumption, human well-being is understood, at least in part, to be the product of people's acceptance of the inherent union between themselves and nature.