Environmental Meaning and Ecosystem Management: Perspectives from Environmental Psychology and Human Geography

The contribution of human dimensions research to the ecological paradigm emerging in natural resource management involves the development of contextually rich, and spatially and historically specific, understandings of places. As an eclectic and integrative field of inquiry, environmental psychology offers a growing body of research that promotes a view of the person as a social agent who seeks out and creates meaning in the environment. As developed in environmental psychology, research from the adaptive, goal‐directed, and sociocultural paradigms is reviewed to illustrate alternative approaches to studying environmental meaning. These paradigms, taken together, provide complementary conceptual approaches for assessment and mapping of the diverse and often competing environmental meanings that various constituencies attach to natural resources. From human geography, the concept of place offers a framework for integrating environmental meanings into ecosystem management. Place constitutes a concrete focal point where natural forces, social relations, and human meanings overlap and can be integrated in theory and practice.