Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 267–270

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Journal of Environmental Psychology

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Introduction to the special issue: Place, identity and environmental behaviour

a b s t r a c t

Research on identity has proliferated in recent decades, particularly within environmental psychology;
the physical environment has been shown to have strong connections to a sense of self, and identity has
proved to be an important mediator of behaviour. The concept of identity has been defined and
measured, however, in a wide variety of ways. The goal of this special issue is to present some of the
recent work tying identity to place and behaviour. In our opening essay we describe some of the
distinctions among approaches to identity at different levels of specificity and scale and suggest some
criteria to determine meaningful sources of identity, including impacts on cognitive processing,
emotional responses, and behaviour. Although a monolithic framework is neither practical nor desirable,
we encourage greater conceptual and methodological integration in future research on the intercon-
nections among place, identity, and behaviour.
.

1. Identity Because it implicates the self, identity has consequences for

Identity is a complex topic. At its core, it refers to some way of
describing or conceptualizing the self, which may incorporate
personal roles and attributes, membership in social groups or cate-
gories, and connections to geographical locations. It includes
descriptions that are generated internally, as well as those that
are imposed by others; it may be based partly on real characteristics,
partly on hopes and aspirations, and partly on feared possibilities.
Although identity has been an important focus of psychological
inquiry since William James, research on identity has boomed in
recent decades. The International Society for Self and Identity
was established in 1996; the journal, Self and Identity, began
appearing in 2002; and the Handbook of Self and Identity was pub-
lished in 2003. This is also reflected within environmental
psychology: a search of this journal turned up 31 articles related
to “identity,” all since 1996; in 2003, Clayton and Opotow (2003)
published Identity and the Natural Environment.
The concept of place identity has a longer history, stemming
from Proshansky’s work in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Proshansky,
Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1983), and encompassing Altman and Low’s
(1992) seminal publication on place attachment in. Place identity
has typically been applied to urban contexts, but it has taken on
new significance more recently when used to understand
responses to the natural environment. Although awareness that
identity is relevant to environmental issues is increasing, there is
considerable variation in the way researchers discuss the sources
of identity, the nature of identity, and the impact of identity as
well as some conceptual confusion in the use of related terms.
Our goal in this special issue is to draw together some of the
most recent work in order to display the range of empirical
approaches currently being undertaken and to try to highlight
some important commonalities and distinctions.
cognition, affect, and behaviour. Because it implicates the social,
identity processes are embedded within wider, dynamic cultural,
political and economic forces. Identity can be examined as both
a dependent and an independent variable, both an effect and
a cause. Our identities are shaped by the experiences we have
with both social and nonsocial stimuli, the people and places that
we encounter, and these identities affect our responses to new
events. Attention to, and interpretations of, environmental threats
are clearly filtered through a perspective based on the perceiver’s
identity.
We pay more attention to events that are self-relevant, and
utilize interpretive biases in order to maintain and present a desired
view of ourselves. Sometimes we do this as individuals, responding
to threats that are highly personal; in other circumstances, we
respond as members of a group or collective, responding to
a common threat to a shared identity, for example to the prospect
of legal changes to a local area (e.g. Bonaiuto, Carrus, Martorella, &
Bonnes, 2002). Emotional and behavioural responses are also con-
nected to identity: we have stronger emotional responses to self-
relevant issues, and try to behave in ways that are congruent
with our (salient) core attitudes and values.
Other important attributes of identity are that it is fluid, multi-
dimensional, and socially relevant. Thus, individuals have multiple
identities whose importance and salience vary across context, in
ways that respond to social motivations. The impact of an identity
will depend not only on environmental events but also on the social
significance assigned to particular identities. As natural environ-
ments become increasingly salient in public discourse, the rele-
vance of environment to identity should also increase, both
directly in terms of the salience of environmental identities, and
indirectly as environmental processes impact upon specific places,
with consequent implications for place identities and behaviours.

doi:10.1016/S0272-4944(10)00078-2
268 Editorial / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 267–270
2. Place and environmental identities
Various perspectives on self-environment relations exist within
environmental psychology and across the social sciences. From the
perspective of social cognition, physical environments are an
unfolding backdrop to the ongoing personal and social events in
our everyday lives, and as such may provide a rich set of cognitive
and emotional associations with specific encounters and events
that resonate with our sense of self. Alternatively, some have argued
that the environment, when conceived as ‘place’, is more then just
a backdrop to personal and social phenomena, but a distinct way of
seeing the world that plays up self-environment relations some-
times overlooked by social researchers (Creswell, 2003). A good
example of this are Korpela (1989), Korpela, Ylen, Tyrvainen, and
Silvennoinen’s (2009) work on favourite places, which have devel-
oped our understanding of the importance of the environment in
ongoing processes of emotional and self-regulation. In this way,
the physical environment is ‘important in itself for the individual’
(Korpela, 1989, p. 244) not merely for its functional requirements.
Concepts of environment and place can be distinguished in
terms of specificity and scale. Whereas places generally refer to
a specific location, often a person’s dwelling place, with an
emphasis upon its uniqueness and associated meanings, concepts
such as ‘the environment’ or ‘nature’ are more general, referring
to natural ecosystems that support human life, more akin to the
biosphere than any single location. Allied to this, the terms often
refer to different scales: environment refers to a greater spatial
area than the term place is typically used to describe.
The contributions to this special issue exemplify this diversity.
While Kiesling and Manning focus on gardens and Williams and
Gosling focus on farms as bounded spatial units of self-identifica-
tion, the work by Lim and Barton, Hernandez, Martin, Ruiz, and
Hidalgo, Scannell and Gifford, and Devine-Wright and Howes
focuses on larger urban settlements, sometimes with a comparative
research design, and the study by Whitmarsh and O’Neill contrasts
with these by focusing on a form of environmental identity that is
explicitly non-territorial – carbon offsetting – which raises inter-
esting questions about how specific a form of identity can be.
Beyond specificity and scale, literature on the relations
between place or environment and the self are characterised by
both complexity and ambiguity, with a plethora of conceptual
terms (e.g. sense of place, rootedness, place identity, place attach-
ment, environmental identity, connectedness to nature, etc.),
contrasting epistemologies, theories and methods, and some-
times a degree of imprecision in definition and measurement.
This has produced significant advances in our knowledge of
different sub-dimensions of self-environment relations, notably
distinctions between place identity and place attachment
(conceived as an emotional bond), between physical and social
aspects (cf. Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001) and between civic and
natural elements (see Scannell & Gifford, this issue). When put
alongside Lewicka’s (2010) recent empirical study of different
types of relations to place (traditional and active attachment, as
well as alienation, place relativity, and placelessness), there is
a need to consolidate this body of increasingly fragmented empir-
ical work by developing over-arching conceptual frameworks that
can encompasses different types and dimensions of self-environ-
ment relations.
3. Different types of place and environmental identities
Environmentally-relevant identities vary not only in geograph-
ical but also in behavioural specificity. Place identity and environ-
mental identity can be differentiated by their geographical scope,
but there are other ways of describing the difference: place
identities should involve more specific, localized experiences, and
thus more specific memories and possibly other differences in
cognitive structure. Identity has also been described even more
narrowly: as a “recycling identity”, for example. In this issue, iden-
tities are proposed that are based on consumer choices and on
gardening. How specific can an identity be, and remain meaningful?
One way of thinking about this question is to compare other
psychological constructs, such as attitudes. General attitudes tend
to be less good at predicting specific behaviours than specific atti-
tudes, but they can predict a wider range of outcomes. Similarly,
specific identities may be very important, but only within a very
narrow range of contexts; more general identities should be rele-
vant to a broader set of experiences and issues. The research
reported by Whitmarsh and O’Neill in this issue examines the ques-
tion of generalizability. Do specific behaviours give rise to a more
general identity, which in turn predicts other behaviours? We
might argue that the significance of an identity relates to its ability
to predict some specified set of behaviours, so that very narrowly
focused identities may still be meaningful within particular
contexts. Both the character and the importance of an identity
vary from person to person and from situation to situation. For
example, most people have an ethnic identity – a sense of them-
selves as a member of a particular ethnic group – but the nature
of that identity can be very different both across and within specific
groups. The importance and impact of that identity also differ
across individuals, and can be heightened or suppressed by the
social context. We have measures to assess individual differences
in environmental and place identity; we should also be able to
generate hypotheses about situations that will render them more
or less significant in predicting behaviour.
In general, it seems useful to define identity with reference to its
social component, and to consider specific identities when there is
an identifiable group of people for whom that identity will be
important. When an identity is linked to a specific behaviour rather
than to a social group, it might be more accurate to describe that
behaviour as a significant part of self-concept – as recycling might
be significant to some people, while no-till gardening might be
significant to others – rather than as an identity. We need a clear
definition of what is required for something to count as an identity.
Some papers in this issue address this explicitly; others more
implicitly. The paper by Lim and Barton explores the nature of iden-
tity in most detail, through the examination of how children’s sense
of place is manifested in their understandings, affective responses,
and behavioural competencies.
An identity should have implications for cognitive processing.
Work on gender identity suggests a promising approach. There is
clear evidence that gender is an important cognitive category
that affects information processing, both by the perceiver and by
the perceived (e.g., Bem, 1981, 1984). Stereotypes are associated
with gender. Mistaking one individual for another same-gender
individual is more common than confusing individuals from
different gender groups. People high in gender identity are more
likely to attend to gender-relevant information and to chunk infor-
mation into gendered categories (Bem, 1984).
There is some evidence that environmental identity affects
information processing. For example, individuals with stronger
environmental identity tend to perceive greater similarity with
animals than those low in environmental identity (Clayton,
2009). Such individuals are also able to make decisions about envi-
ronmental dilemmas with less difficulty and greater confidence
compared to people with weaker environmental identity
(Clayton, 2003). And certainly, place and environmental identities
are subject to stereotypes. More work is needed to demonstrate
the impact of environmental and place identities on the processing
of information.
 Editorial / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 267–270
Another indication that identities are implicated in responses to
environmental issues is that they have emotional significance and
give rise to motivational biases. The connection (and sometimes
confusion) between place attachment and place identity illustrates
the strong ties between identity and emotion. Own-group biases
suggest that we will have more positive evaluations of entities
with which we share an identity (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1986), and
extend them a greater level of moral consideration. Again, research
suggests that individuals with stronger environmental identity
accord greater moral rights to environmental identities (Clayton,
2003, 2008). In this special issue, Devine-Wright and Howes’
work uses affect measures (e.g. anger, frustration, shock) to reveal
perceived threats to place identities that arise from proposed tech-
nology developments.
4. Self-environment relations and behaviour
Identity is perhaps of most interest because of its implications
for behaviour. Yet much early work on environmental aspects of
identity gave relatively little attention to issues of behaviour, in
contrast to work in social psychology, which for example investi-
gated aspects of intergroup conflict (e.g. Tajfel & Turner, 1986) or
identity threat (e.g. Breakwell, 1986).
This has changed in recent years with a succession of empirical
studies that have tackled behavioural aspects of self-environment
relations (e.g. Vaske & Kobrin, 2001; Stedman, 2002; Uzzell, Pol,
& Badenas, 2002; Brown, Perkins, & Brown, 2003; Lewicka, 2005;
Payton, Fulton, & Anderson, 2005; Halfpenny, 2006). This is
a welcome development in the field, and would benefit from
greater clarity about diverse types of environmental behaviour
and precise definitions. Stern’s (2000) typology of pro-environ-
mental behaviours is a useful starting point, encompassing ‘civic’
behaviours including protests or petition signing; work-sphere
behaviours; and private-sphere behaviours that are more regularly
studied in the field, for example recycling, travel behaviours, or
energy consumption in the home. The diversity of Stern’s typology
illustrates the many ways that identities could relate to specific
forms of behaviour.
Self-environment relations may have several implications for
behaviour. First, as the study by Lim and colleagues in this special
issue makes clear, the process of identifying oneself with a place
can involve forms of wayfinding and navigation that may represent
developmental stages of identifying the physical and social dimen-
sions of a place, thus enabling self-identification with the place,
described by the authors as a state of insideness. Second, as
Stedman (2002) noted, individuals who strongly identify them-
selves with a particular place may take action on behalf of that
place, either to try to remedy problems that already exist there or
to prevent forms of negatively interpreted change from occurring.
These behavioural responses may be either individual or collec-
tive in nature. At a small scale, the study by Kiesling and Manning
reveals how self-identification as a gardener can motivate individ-
uals to adopt specific forms of pro-environmental behaviour in
that particular, private context. At a slightly larger scale, Devine-
Wright and Howes focus on civic or political behaviours on behalf
of a place in the context of technology development that impacts
upon a natural place. That the action of attempting to prevent
a renewable energy project from proceeding may be interpreted
as pro-environmental by some local residents who feel threatened
by technology proposals suggests that caution is necessary in
research when applying or adopting this label.
Third, individuals may undertake private-sphere pro-environ-
mental behaviours that seem to arise from strong place attach-
ments (see Scannell & Gifford), connectedness to nature (see
Williams & Gosling) or novel forms of environmental identity (as
269
a carbon offsetter, see Whitmarsh & O’Neill). Although the specific
behaviours in these studies differed, they nevertheless showed
how self-environment relations can play out in local environmental
action, opening up a new avenue of research into the antecedents of
pro-environmental behaviour.
Finally, as the study by Hernandez and colleagues reveals,
behavioural aspects of self-environment relations encompass
transgressive or ‘anti-environmental’ behaviours. These fall outside
of Stern’s pro-environmental behaviour typology, and have been
relatively neglected by research to date. The study also shows
how the role of place identities in influencing behaviour is indirect:
mediated by social and personal norms. Arising from these studies
is a greater sense of the ways in which links between self, environ-
ment and behaviour are multi-faceted, involving diverse forms of
identification with specific places or more general environments,
as well as a range of public and private-sphere behaviours that
could be classed as ‘pro’ or ‘anti-environmental’.
5. Conclusions
Increasing globalisation and the commodification of environ-
ments has, in many ways, made places more, rather than less
important in an era dominated by the threat of climate change.
This is why self-environment relations – specifically issues of place
identity and environmental identity – continue to be a keystone of
environmental psychological research, as evidenced by the increase
in research activity over the past 15 years. Although this upsurge in
interest is to be welcomed, there is considerable variation in the
way researchers approach self-environment relations, as well as
some conceptual confusion in the use of related terms. Our goal
in this special issue is to draw together seven of the most recent
studies with the aim of displaying the range of empirical
approaches currently being undertaken and to highlight some
important commonalities and distinctions between different forms
of self-environment relations and their implications for behaviour.
The current studies represent the application of a striking diver-
sity of approaches. As a result, calling for the adoption of a single,
shared paradigm in researching behavioural aspects of self-envi-
ronment relations is probably both unrealistic and unwise. Such
calls have been made before (e.g. Stedman, 2002) but have not
been taken up, and indeed it has been suggested that a tolerance
of conceptual and methodological pluralism is the most appro-
priate path to take (Patterson & Williams, 2005), given the range
of diverse epistemologies and perspectives adopted by self-envi-
ronment researchers, for example social cognition, discursive
psychology and phenomenology.
Although a plurality of approaches may be most appropriate, it
remains vital that researchers avoid an increasing fragmentation of
the empirical literature, which can arise where empirical studies
are conducted without a strong conceptual basis, or where partic-
ular epistemological positions become entrenched, leading to alter-
natives being merely caricatured or ignored. Such factionalism has
already been a difficulty in social psychology, leading to a lack of
progress and coherence in the field as a whole (De Rosa, 2006).
Looking forward, novel conceptual advances should be
proposed, alongside an upsurge in empirical research activities,
with the aim of devising new conceptual frameworks that can
encompass or discriminate between the various dimensions of
self-environment relations revealed in this special issue. These
include physical and social dimensions, natural and civic dimen-
sions and relations between place identity, place attachment and
environmental identity. Future studies should have a clear rationale
for the methodological approach that they adopt, one that is based
on a coherent conceptual approach, and that is embedded in past
research.
270 Editorial / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 267–270
Finally, the constantly dynamic nature of self-environment rela-
tions must be made more explicit in both conceptual frameworks
and in research designs. With some notable recent exceptions
(e.g. Chow & Healey, 2008; Korpela et al., 2009), there are relatively
few published longitudinal studies of identity in the environmental
psychology literature. Their absence can lead to an unnecessary
static way of conceptualising self-environment relations that are
at odd with the rapidly changing world we inhabit. Place and envi-
ronmental identities are constantly evolving, as both people and
environments change. The challenge now is to better capture these
dynamics in ways that are theoretically sound and methodologi-
cally robust, which can produce findings of interest and of use to
a wide range of stakeholders.
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Patrick Devine-Wright
Susan Clayton