Valuing birds: a quantitative approach to explore relational values

This study examines the concept of environmental relational values (RVs) by exploring the case of the human-nature relationships of birdwatchers. Because RVs are context-sensitive, they are difficult to capture quantitatively. This research uses a statistical analysis of a micronarrative-based SenseMaker® survey to identify some of the main constituents of birdwatchers’ RVs. Besides context-sensitivity, a give-and-take between the valuer and the valued objects is a characteristic feature of RVs, also called bidirectionality. Our results show that the main sources of benefit in birdwatching (take for the birdwatchers) are the ‘pleasure’ and ‘meaning’ which emerge from the experiences described in the survey. The main contributions (give) of birdwatchers in the human-nature relationships are ‘attention’ and ‘respect’. We found that the benefits for and contributions of the birdwatchers (the takes and gives constituting RVs’ ‘bidirectionality’) combine in four distinguishable pairs: ‘pleasure’ and ‘attention’, ‘meaning’ and ‘respect’, ‘gains’ and ‘attention’, ‘meaning’ and ‘care’. Statistical tests show that these relational pairs are associated with different conceptions of the human place in nature (‘guest in’, ‘part of’ or ‘partner with’ nature). Based on these results we distinguish between three different types of ‘human-nature engagements’ (HNE), considering the distinct understandings of nature and RVs they contain. This study quantitatively describes the bidirectionality for the characterisation of RVs and shows that questions relating to a specific personal experience can be used for a quantitative analysis of context-sensitive values. This study establishes the suitability of a micronarrative-based survey for studying environmental RVs.