Environmental Identity

A person can have multiple identities and identity provide a framework for organizing information about a person. For example, William James suggested the material, social, and personal aspects of identity.

Material self refer to how people identify themselves with their tangible possessions like a car or an expensive handbag.

Social self comes from the roles that we hold in the society. For example, some of us are student, brother or son and these social roles affect identity.

Personal self or the self-concept would be how a person thinks about or perceive themselves.

On top of the above three aspects of identity Environmental Identity propose the ecological self: “a sense of identity that transcends the individual and encompasses one’s position as part of a living ecosystem”. Put simply, it means how much a person identifies with the environment and perception of the overlap between their self-concept with environment.

Place Identity

Place identity is a more specific way in how environment affects the identity. It is the component of identity that has emotional attachment to a place. It is like a psychological investment in a particular setting over time.

Place identity might be correlated to environmentally responsible behaviors as suggested by a research done by Jerry and Katherine. Place identity is found to be stronger in people who exhibit environmentally responsible behaviors like conserving water and recycling. Additionally, place dependence (how dependent on a place to fulfill one’s goal) is found to mediate place identity. This means that someone who is dependent on the environment is likely to identify themselves with the environment and protect it.

place identity 1

Figure extracted from: Vaske, J. J., & Kobrin, K. C. (2001). Place attachment and environmentally responsible behavior. The Journal of Environmental Education32(4), 16-21.

Identity and Behavior (Applying to Indonesia Forest Fires)

A strong environmental identity should affect information processing in people and ultimately how people respond to environmental issues and problems. For example, people with stronger environmental identity tend to perceive greater similarity with animals than those with low environmental identity. This stronger overlap in self-concept (we pay more attention to events that are self-relevant) tend to make people are more sensitive and more emotionally connected to the environment, thus they should view environmental threats more seriously as the threats to environment is akin to threats to themselves. Previous research has found that participants with higher environmental identity score tend to be exhibit pro-environmental views and behaviors.

This can be applied to the issue of forest fire in Indonesia. In order to stop the unremitting forest fires, inculcating environmental identity in parties involved in the fires is important. Although there has been no research yet that measures the environmental identity of the parties involved but we can assume that they would not have strong environmental identity from the unrelenting burning of the forest. A possible way to improve their environmental identity would be for the farmers and companies to take responsibility for their land. This is similar to letting them “adopt” the area and have a personal responsibility to it. Hopefully this would increase their environmental identity and for them to feel the need to preserve the natural environment.