Extending Environmental Activism through Dispositional Empathy for Nature

• In Event: Extending Empathy in Environmental Justice Movements: Understanding Missing Voices and Utilizing Transformational Praxis

Proposal

What role does empathy play in youth environmental movements? How does empathy for animals and the natural world influence young peoples’ decisions to participate in eco-activism and protests? To explore these questions, this paper will examine the existing literature on dispositional empathy for nature (DEN), and present the results of an empirical study on the connection between empathy and environmental activism.

Existing literature has demonstrated that higher levels of empathy for the environment predict increased levels of environmental behavior and commitments (Wang et al., 2022). Moreover, in recent years, environmental activism among youth has grown tremendously—sparked largely by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future protests. To better understand the motivating factors behind students’ activism for the environment, youth around the world who are involved with organizations such as Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise Movement, The Changemaker Project, New Roots Institute, and various member organizations of the Youth Climate Movement (YouNGO) will be surveyed and interviewed about their experiences with activism, their personal connection to nature, and their empathy towards animals and the environment.

Participants will self-select as environmental activists affiliated with an environmental group, and participate in an online survey to assess their empathy for nature, personal connection to nature, and other factors which may be related to their decisions to engage in environmental activism. After completing the survey, students will be asked if they would like to participate in a 1:1 interview about their experiences as an activist. The hope for this study is to understand the degree to which empathy, connection with nature, and other factors may play a role in students’ engagement with environmental activism.

Author

• AnnaLise Hoopes, UCLA