Research team

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Mark Ferguson – University of Exeter

Kevin Gaston– University of Exeter

Aims

Understanding people, their agency, nature experiences, landscape-embeddedness, and framings-of-meaning, is at the heart of RENEW. This work is intended to pilot a Personalised Ecology Index (PEI) that will translate the concept of Personalised Ecology into a simple measure.  

The aims of the Personalised Ecology Index pilot study are:

• To pilot a Personalised Ecology Index made up of multiple components, which provides a single numeric score representing an individual’s interactions with nature
  

• To explore what questions, and components of questions, are most appropriate in developing a Personalised Ecology Index measure 

• To assess if there are differences in Personalised Ecology Index scores by demographic groups. 

Approach

The PEI will measure an individual’s interactions with nature through questionnaire responses and quantify multiple dimensions of these interactions. These responses will then be combined into one numeric score.  

The components of nature interactions that will be trialled are:  

1. Frequency of visits 
2. Duration of visits 
3. The diversity of environments that visits are to 
4. The intensity of nature interactions (i.e. how much attention an individual pays to various aspects of nature when they are in natural environments).
   

The pilot study will assess which questions and weightings are most appropriate, and whether such an index works across different groups. Selected questions from other nature relatedness scores and other nature interaction questions will also be asked for comparison, to help test the index.  

Once the questionnaire is finalised, we will commission a nationally representative (based on age, sex and ethnicity) UK adult population to complete the survey and analyse the responses to test the feasibility of creating a Personalised Ecology Index.   

Next steps

If successful, the index has the potential to be used as a public engagement tool to help individuals think about their nature interactions. This is also important for research which aims to understand attitudes, beliefs and experiences of nature, and can inform responses to the biodiversity crisis. While related concepts such as nature connectedness1 are useful, they do not capture direct interactions with nature. This work aims to fill that gap.