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145 validated psychological measures for conservation and environmental psychology research. Search by keyword, filter by domain, or browse the full collection.
Showing all 145 measures
Animal Rights Scale
Measures attitudes toward the rights and moral status of non-human animals, including beliefs about animal suffering, the ethics of animal use in research and food production, and support for animal welfare legislation. Widely used in human–animal relations research and conservation psychology.
Ascription of Responsibility Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals ascribe personal responsibility for environmental problems to themselves versus others (industry, government, other people). Based on Schwartz's (1977) norm-activation model, which posits that pro-environmental behavior is motivated by awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility. The scale assesses whether respondents feel personally obligated to act on environmental problems or attribute responsibility to external agents. Widely used in studies of environmental norm activation and altruistic behavior.
Attitude Toward Environmental Issues Scale
A 15-item scale measuring middle and high school students' attitudes toward environmental issues across three subscales: Affect (emotional responses to environmental problems), Cognition (beliefs and knowledge about environmental issues), and Behavior (intentions and self-reported behaviors related to the environment). Developed by Yilmaz, Boone, and Andersen (2004) for use in environmental education research. Validated with Turkish secondary school students and designed to assess the tripartite structure of environmental attitudes.
Attitudes Toward Biodiversity Scale
Measures attitudes toward biodiversity conservation, including beliefs about the value of biodiversity, support for biodiversity protection policies, and willingness to make personal sacrifices for biodiversity conservation. Captures both utilitarian (biodiversity is useful) and intrinsic (biodiversity has value in itself) orientations.
Attitudes Toward Hunting Scale
Measures attitudes toward hunting as a wildlife management tool, cultural practice, and recreational activity. Captures both positive orientations (hunting as conservation, tradition, food source) and negative orientations (hunting as cruel, unnecessary, harmful to wildlife populations).
Awe in Nature Scale
Measures the tendency to experience awe — a sense of vastness, wonder, and self-transcendence — in response to natural environments. Awe in nature is associated with increased nature connectedness, pro-social behavior, reduced self-focus, and greater willingness to engage in conservation action.
Behavior-Based Environmental Attitude Scale for Adults
A behavior-based measure of environmental attitudes that uses behavioral intentions and self-reported behaviors as indicators of underlying attitudes toward the environment. Developed by Kaiser, Oerke, and Bogner (2007) as an extension of Kaiser's General Ecological Behavior (GEB) scale. The BBEASA treats environmental attitudes as latent constructs inferred from behavioral responses rather than from direct attitude statements. Covers domains including energy conservation, mobility, recycling, consumer behavior, and nature experience.
Biospheric Values Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals hold biospheric values — values that extend concern beyond humans to all living things and the biosphere. Part of Stern's Value-Belief-Norm theory.
Childhood Nature Experience Scale
Retrospectively assesses the frequency and quality of nature experiences during childhood, including free play in natural settings, wildlife observation, and mentored outdoor activities. Childhood nature experiences are among the strongest predictors of adult nature connectedness, environmental identity, and conservation behavior.
Childhood Nature Experience Scale
Retrospectively measures the frequency and quality of nature experiences during childhood, including free play in natural settings, wildlife encounters, gardening, and family nature activities. Used to examine the developmental origins of adult nature connectedness and pro-environmental behavior.
Children's Connection to Nature Index
Measures children's and adolescents' affective, cognitive, and behavioral connections to the natural world. Designed for use with youth aged 8–18, the scale captures enjoyment of nature, knowledge about nature, and nature-based behaviors, making it suitable for environmental education research and program evaluation.
Children's Environmental Worldview Scale
A children's adaptation of the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale developed by Van Petegem and Blieck (2006) for use with Flemish secondary school students. Measures children's ecological worldview across three dimensions: Balance of Nature (beliefs about ecological fragility and interconnectedness), Anti-Anthropocentrism (rejection of human dominance over nature), and Limits to Growth (beliefs about resource limits and population). Designed for ages 12–18 and validated in a Belgian educational context.
Climate Anxiety Scale
Measures anxiety and worry about climate change, including cognitive (rumination, intrusive thoughts), affective (fear, dread), and behavioral (avoidance, compulsive checking) dimensions of climate-related anxiety. Distinguishes adaptive anxiety (motivating action) from maladaptive anxiety (paralyzing distress).
Climate Change Action Intentions Scale
Measures intentions to engage in climate change mitigation and adaptation behaviors, including personal lifestyle changes, political engagement, and community action. Assesses both private-sphere intentions (reducing personal carbon footprint) and public-sphere intentions (advocacy, voting, collective action).
Climate Change Beliefs Scale
Assesses beliefs about the reality, causes, and consequences of climate change. Measures both cognitive and affective dimensions of climate change acceptance and concern.
Climate Change Beliefs Scale
Measures beliefs about the reality, causes, and consequences of climate change, including belief in human causation, perceived severity, perceived certainty, and personal relevance. Designed to capture the full range of climate change beliefs from strong denial to strong acceptance, and to distinguish different dimensions of climate belief.
Climate Distress Scale
Measures psychological distress specifically related to climate change, including grief over climate-related losses, anger at inaction, despair about the future, and guilt about personal contributions to climate change. Designed to assess the full range of negative emotional responses to the climate crisis.
Climate Hope Scale
Measures hope related to climate change, including belief in the possibility of positive change, confidence in human capacity to address climate challenges, and optimism about the future of the planet. Designed to capture the positive emotional dimension of climate psychology as a counterpart to measures of climate anxiety and distress.
Climate Justice Attitudes Scale
Measures attitudes toward climate justice — the belief that climate change disproportionately affects vulnerable populations and that climate action must address social inequalities. Captures both distributive justice concerns (who bears the costs and benefits of climate change) and procedural justice concerns (who has a voice in climate decision-making).
Commitment to the Environment Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals are committed to protecting the natural environment as a stable, long-term personal value and behavioral orientation. Developed by Davis, Green, and Reed (2009) based on organizational commitment theory applied to environmental behavior. Distinguishes three components of environmental commitment: Affective Commitment (emotional attachment to environmental protection), Normative Commitment (felt obligation to act pro-environmentally), and Continuance Commitment (perceived costs of not acting pro-environmentally). Predicts sustained pro-environmental behavior over time.
Compassion for Nature Scale
Measures compassion directed toward the natural world, including concern for the suffering of animals and ecosystems, motivation to alleviate environmental harm, and a sense of shared humanity with all living things. Based on the compassion literature in positive psychology and applied to human–nature relationships.
Conflicting Worldviews Questionnaire
Measures the degree to which individuals hold conflicting or internally inconsistent worldviews regarding the natural environment — specifically the tension between a dominant social paradigm (DSP) that prioritizes human mastery over nature and economic growth, and a new ecological paradigm (NEP) that emphasizes ecological limits and human interdependence with nature. Developed around 2007 by Devlin and colleagues, the CWQ captures ambivalence and cognitive inconsistency in environmental worldviews rather than treating them as a single bipolar dimension. Useful for understanding why people may simultaneously endorse pro-environmental beliefs and anti-environmental behaviors.
Connectedness to Living Things Scale
Measures the sense of connection to all living things — plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms — rather than just to "nature" as a broad concept. Captures the biophilic dimension of nature relatedness, including emotional bonds with specific species and ecosystems, and the sense that all life is interconnected.
Connectedness to Nature and Well-Being Scale
Examines the relationship between individuals' sense of connection to nature and subjective well-being. Measures how much contact with and appreciation of the natural world contributes to life satisfaction and positive affect.
Connectedness to Nature Questionnaire
A 16-item measure assessing the emotional, cognitive, and experiential dimensions of individuals' sense of connection to the natural world. Developed to capture both the affective bond with nature and the recognition of humans as part of the natural system, with particular attention to cross-cultural applicability.
Connectedness to Nature Scale
A 14-item scale measuring the extent to which individuals feel emotionally connected to the natural world. Assesses the degree to which a person sees themselves as part of nature rather than separate from it.
Connectedness to Nature Scale for Children
A child-adapted version of Mayer and Frantz's (2004) Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS), developed for use with elementary and middle school children. Items from the original CNS were simplified in language and reading level to be appropriate for children ages 8–14. The scale measures children's sense of emotional and cognitive connection to the natural world, including feelings of kinship with other species, belonging in nature, and concern for nature's well-being. Validated with samples of children in outdoor education and school settings.
Connection to Nature Index (Children)
A measure of children's connection to nature developed by Cheng (2008) as part of a dissertation study examining the antecedents and consequences of nature connection in youth. The scale assesses children's affective, cognitive, and experiential connection to the natural world, including enjoyment of nature, sense of belonging in natural settings, and concern for nature's well-being. Validated with elementary school children in Florida and designed for use in outdoor and environmental education research.
Connection to Nature Scale
A 16-item scale measuring adults' subjective sense of connection to the natural world, including feelings of belonging in nature, kinship with other species, and emotional responsiveness to nature. Developed as a complementary measure to the Connectedness to Nature Scale (Mayer & Frantz, 2004) with an emphasis on the affective and relational dimensions of human–nature connection. Items assess both the cognitive sense of being part of nature and the emotional experience of caring about and feeling moved by the natural world.
Conservation Behavior Scale
Measures self-reported conservation behaviors across multiple domains of everyday life, including energy use, water conservation, transportation, purchasing, and waste reduction. The CBS was developed to assess the frequency and breadth of conservation behaviors in household and community contexts. Items cover both high-effort behaviors (e.g., installing solar panels, composting) and low-effort behaviors (e.g., turning off lights, using reusable bags). Designed for use with adult community samples.
Conservation Commitment Scale
Measures the strength of individuals' commitment to conservation goals and their willingness to make personal sacrifices for environmental protection. Assesses both attitudinal commitment and behavioral intention toward conservation.
Conservation Policy Support Scale
Measures public support for conservation policies including protected area establishment, wildlife management regulations, environmental taxation, and international conservation agreements. Assesses both attitudinal support and willingness to accept personal costs for conservation policy implementation.
Consideration of Future Consequences Scale
Measures the extent to which people consider the distant versus immediate consequences of their behaviors. Individuals who score high on the CFC think about distant consequences as more important than immediate ones. The scale is widely used in environmental psychology to predict pro-environmental behavior, as concern for future consequences is a key motivator of sustainable action.
Cross-Cultural Environmental Attitudes Scale
A cross-culturally validated measure of environmental attitudes developed by Evans, Juen, Corral-Verdugo, Corraliza, and Kaiser (2007). The scale uses a behavior-based approach to measure environmental attitudes across diverse cultural contexts, drawing on Kaiser's General Ecological Behavior (GEB) framework. Items were selected for cross-cultural equivalence across samples from Austria, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. The scale assesses pro-environmental attitudes as inferred from behavioral intentions and self-reported behaviors, making it suitable for comparative international research.
Deep Ecology Values Scale
Measures endorsement of deep ecology principles, including the intrinsic value of all living beings, the importance of biodiversity for its own sake, rejection of human exceptionalism, and support for radical changes to human–nature relationships. Based on Naess's deep ecology philosophy.
Dunlap–Van Liere New Environmental Paradigm Scale
The original 12-item scale measuring endorsement of the New Environmental Paradigm — the belief that humans are part of nature and subject to ecological limits. Developed as a counterpoint to the Dominant Social Paradigm and widely used as a foundational measure of pro-ecological worldview before the 2000 revision.
Eco-Anxiety Scale
Measures eco-anxiety — chronic fear and anxiety about environmental doom and the future of the planet. Captures both the cognitive (worry, rumination) and somatic (physical symptoms of anxiety) dimensions of eco-anxiety, as well as its impact on daily functioning and quality of life.
Ecological Grief Scale
Measures grief responses to ecological loss, including species extinction, habitat destruction, and climate-driven environmental change. Captures the emotional dimensions of ecological loss including sadness, mourning, anger, and a sense of helplessness in response to environmental degradation.
Ecological Self Scale
Measures the extent to which individuals define their sense of self in ecological terms — the degree to which the natural environment, ecosystems, and non-human species are incorporated into one's self-concept. Grounded in deep ecology philosophy (Næss, 1973) and the concept of the "ecological self," which holds that mature ecological consciousness involves expanding one's sense of identity to encompass the broader natural world. Distinct from connectedness measures in that it explicitly assesses self-definition and identity rather than emotional connection or relationship quality.
Ecological Worldview Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals hold an ecocentric worldview — valuing nature intrinsically and recognizing the interdependence of all living systems. Distinguishes ecocentric orientation (nature has value independent of human use) from anthropocentric orientation (nature valued for human benefit).
Emotional Affinity toward Nature Scale (Adults)
Measures emotional affinity toward nature — the love, affection, and positive emotional connection to the natural world. Captures four dimensions: Love of Nature (deep affection and respect for nature), Feelings of Freedom (sense of liberation and ease in nature), Feelings of Safety (sense of security and home in nature), and Feelings of Oneness with Nature (sense of unity and shared origin with nature). Developed by Kals et al. (1999) as a motivational basis for nature-protective behavior.
Empathy Towards Animals Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals experience empathic concern for animals — the capacity to understand and share the emotional states of non-human animals, and to feel concern for their welfare. Assesses both cognitive empathy (perspective-taking with animals) and affective empathy (emotional resonance with animal suffering or wellbeing). Developed to extend human empathy research to the human–animal relationship domain. Relevant for animal welfare research, conservation psychology, and understanding the psychological roots of pro-animal behavior.
Environmental Activism Scale
Measures participation in environmental activism and collective action, including signing petitions, attending protests, contacting elected officials, and engaging in environmental advocacy. Distinguishes between low-cost activism (signing online petitions) and high-cost activism (civil disobedience, sustained campaigning).
Environmental Agentic Disposition Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals perceive themselves as capable, motivated, and empowered agents of environmental change. Assesses the belief that one's own actions can make a meaningful difference to environmental outcomes — combining elements of environmental self-efficacy, internal locus of control, and proactive environmental agency. Distinguishes between personal agency (belief in one's own capacity to act) and collective agency (belief in the capacity of groups and communities to effect environmental change). Relevant for predicting environmental activism, civic engagement, and sustained pro-environmental behavior.
Environmental Attitudes Scale
A comprehensive 120-item inventory measuring 12 distinct dimensions of environmental attitudes including enjoyment of nature, support for interventionist conservation, and environmental threat.
Environmental Attitudes Scale
A 16-item scale measuring environmental attitudes with four subscales: Anti-Development (opposition to environmentally harmful industries), Green Power (pro-environmental political stance), Doomsday (beliefs about catastrophic environmental scenarios), and Mixed. Developed in an Australian context but widely adapted. Items were drawn from previous measures of environmental attitude clusters and counterbalanced for positive and negative wording.
Environmental Attitudes Scale (Blaikie)
A multidimensional measure of environmental attitudes developed by Blaikie (1992) drawing on earlier work by Richmond and Baumgart (1981). The scale assesses attitudes toward environmental issues across several dimensions including concern for pollution, support for conservation policies, beliefs about human–nature relationships, and willingness to make personal sacrifices for environmental protection. Developed in an Australian context and validated with adult community samples. One of the early comprehensive environmental attitude batteries used in Australian environmental psychology research.
Environmental Attitudes Scale (Forgas & Jolliffe)
A brief multidimensional scale measuring environmental attitudes across affective, cognitive, and conative (behavioral intention) components. Developed by Forgas and Jolliffe (1994) to provide a psychometrically sound short measure suitable for use in survey research where brevity is important. Assesses general orientation toward the environment including concern for environmental problems, beliefs about human responsibility, and willingness to act. Validated with adult community and student samples.
Environmental Attitudes Scale (Pettus & Giles)
An environmental attitudes scale developed by Pettus and Giles (1987) for use with secondary school and college students. Measures attitudes toward environmental issues including pollution, resource conservation, wildlife protection, and population growth. Designed for use in educational settings to assess the effectiveness of environmental education programs. The scale emphasizes both cognitive beliefs about environmental problems and affective responses to environmental degradation.
Environmental Attitudes Scale for Adolescents
A measure of environmental attitudes specifically developed and validated for use with adolescent populations (ages 12–18). Assesses attitudes toward nature, environmental concern, and support for conservation across cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. Adapted from adult environmental attitude instruments to be developmentally appropriate in language and content. Widely used in environmental education research to assess attitude change following curriculum interventions.
Environmental Attitudes toward Urban Nature
Measures attitudes specifically toward urban nature — green spaces, urban wildlife, street trees, parks, and biodiversity within city environments. Assesses the degree to which urban residents value, appreciate, and support the preservation of nature within urban settings. Distinguishes between attitudes toward managed urban green spaces (parks, gardens) and spontaneous urban nature (weeds, urban wildlife, brownfield vegetation). Relevant for urban planning, green infrastructure policy, and urban ecology research.
Environmental Awareness and Attitudes of Student Teachers Scale
Measures environmental awareness, knowledge, and attitudes among pre-service and in-service teachers. Developed to assess the environmental literacy of student teachers as a predictor of their capacity to deliver effective environmental education. Covers awareness of environmental problems, attitudes toward conservation and sustainability, knowledge of ecological concepts, and self-efficacy for teaching environmental topics. Used in teacher education research to evaluate the impact of environmental education coursework on teacher candidates.
Environmental Behavior Index
A broad-spectrum measure of pro-environmental behaviors across multiple domains including energy conservation, water conservation, waste reduction, sustainable purchasing, and environmental citizenship. Designed to provide a comprehensive behavioral profile rather than focusing on a single behavioral domain.
Environmental Behavioral Goals Scale
Measures the extent to which individuals have internalized environmental goals as part of their personal goal hierarchy. Based on Hirsh and Dolderman's (2007) research linking personality traits (particularly Openness to Experience and Agreeableness) to environmental concern and behavior. The scale assesses whether environmental protection is a personally important and chronically accessible goal, rather than a situationally activated intention. Distinguishes between intrinsic environmental goals (valuing nature for its own sake) and instrumental goals (protecting the environment for human benefit).
Environmental Concern Scale
Measures the degree to which people are aware of environmental problems and support efforts to solve them. Assesses both cognitive awareness and affective concern about environmental issues.
Environmental Concern Scale
A general measure of concern about environmental problems, assessing the degree to which individuals are worried about, feel responsible for, and are motivated to address a range of environmental issues. One of the earliest and most widely used measures in environmental psychology, providing a baseline for comparisons across studies and time periods.
Environmental Concern Scale
A brief 5-item measure of general environmental concern drawn from the Ellis and Thompson (1997) study of environmental activism and cultural bias. Assesses the degree to which individuals are concerned about ecological catastrophe, resource depletion, and environmental spending. Designed for use in surveys of landowners and rural populations, though applicable more broadly.
Environmental Concern Scale — Revised
An updated measure of environmental concern that captures concern across three value bases: egoistic (concern for personal health and well-being), altruistic (concern for other people), and biospheric (concern for all living things). Based on Stern's value-basis framework for environmental concern.
Environmental Connectivity Scale
Measures the extent to which individuals feel a sense of connection with their natural surroundings. Developed for use with rural landowners, the scale includes six Likert items and one visual Venn diagram item in which respondents indicate the degree of overlap between "self" and "nature." Three items make no reference to nature to capture a general sense of connectivity.
Environmental Empathy Scale
Measures the capacity to empathize with the natural environment, including non-human species and ecosystems. Assesses both cognitive perspective-taking toward nature and affective responses to environmental harm.
Environmental Empathy Scale
Measures the capacity to empathize with the natural environment, including the ability to take the perspective of ecosystems and non-human species, feel concern for environmental suffering, and experience emotional responses to environmental degradation. Extends the concept of empathy beyond human-to-human interactions to human–nature relationships.
Environmental Grief Scale
Measures grief responses to environmental loss and degradation, including sadness, mourning, anger, and a sense of helplessness in response to species extinction, habitat destruction, and climate-driven environmental change. Designed to assess the full range of grief responses to ecological loss, from acute grief to chronic mourning.
Environmental Identity Scale
A 24-item scale measuring the degree to which the natural environment is an important part of a person's self-concept. Captures how much people see themselves as environmentalists and feel a sense of identity with the natural world.
Environmental Identity Scale
A comprehensive 24-item measure of environmental identity — the sense that one's relationship with the natural world is an important part of who one is. Captures multiple facets of environmental identity including personal history with nature, emotional connection, sense of similarity with nature, and public environmental identity.
Environmental Identity Scale (Bruni)
A 28-item scale measuring the extent to which individuals identify with the natural environment and environmental causes. Developed by Coral M. Bruni based on Clayton's (2003) conceptual framework of environmental identity. Captures behavioral engagement with nature, identification with environmentalists, sense of kinship with other species, spiritual connection to nature, and the role of nature in self-concept. Scores range from 28 to 140.
Environmental Identity Scale (Clayton 2003)
A 24-item scale measuring the degree to which the natural environment is an important part of an individual's self-concept. Developed by Clayton (2003) as a comprehensive measure of environmental identity — the sense that one is part of the natural world, that nature is important to one's sense of self, and that one's relationship with nature is a meaningful aspect of who one is. Covers multiple facets of environmental identity including childhood nature experiences, current nature engagement, environmental values, and the centrality of nature to self-definition. One of the most widely used environmental identity measures in the field.
Environmental Justice Attitudes Scale
Measures attitudes toward environmental justice — the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across social groups, including race, class, gender, and geography. Captures beliefs about environmental inequity, support for environmental justice policies, and recognition of the disproportionate environmental impacts on marginalized communities.
Environmental Justice Principles Scale
Measures endorsement of environmental justice principles — the belief that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, income, or national origin, deserve equal protection from environmental hazards and equal access to environmental benefits. Assesses support for the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (1991). Covers distributive justice (fair distribution of environmental burdens and benefits), procedural justice (fair participation in environmental decision-making), and recognition justice (acknowledgment of diverse cultural relationships with the environment).
Environmental Knowledge Scale
Measures factual knowledge about environmental issues and ecological systems, including knowledge of climate change causes and consequences, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and environmental policy. Distinguishes between declarative knowledge (knowing facts) and procedural knowledge (knowing how to act) in the environmental domain.
Environmental Lifestyle Indices
A composite measure of the environmental impact of individuals' lifestyle choices across multiple consumption domains including food, transportation, energy use, housing, and consumer goods. Unlike attitude or intention measures, the ELI focuses on actual lifestyle patterns and their estimated environmental footprint. Combines self-reported behavioral frequency data with impact weighting factors derived from life cycle assessment research to produce domain-specific and overall lifestyle impact indices. Used in sustainability research to identify high-impact behavior change targets.
Environmental Literacy Scale
A comprehensive measure of environmental literacy encompassing ecological knowledge, environmental attitudes, environmental sensitivity, and pro-environmental behavior. Designed for use in environmental education research to assess the outcomes of formal and informal environmental education programs.
Environmental Racism Awareness Scale
Measures awareness of and attitudes toward environmental racism — the disproportionate siting of environmental hazards in communities of color and the exclusion of people of color from environmental decision-making. Designed for use in environmental justice research and education to assess understanding of the racial dimensions of environmental inequality.
Environmental Response Inventory
A comprehensive 184-item inventory measuring environmental attitudes across eight subscales: Pastoralism (conservation, resistance to development, self-reliance in nature), Urbanism (enjoyment of city life), Environmental Adaptation (belief in human right to modify nature), Stimulus Seeking (desire for novel and intense environmental experiences), Environmental Trust (openness and trust toward the environment), Antiquarianism (affinity for old places and things), Need for Privacy (preference for isolation and seclusion), and Mechanical Orientation (interest in technology and hands-on work). Includes a Communality validity scale. One of the most comprehensive environmental attitude inventories ever developed.
Environmental Self-Efficacy Scale
Measures individuals' beliefs in their capacity to perform pro-environmental behaviors and to make a meaningful difference to environmental outcomes. Captures both action self-efficacy (confidence in performing specific behaviors) and coping self-efficacy (confidence in overcoming barriers to environmental action).
Environmental Self-Identity Scale
A brief 3-item scale measuring the degree to which being environmentally friendly is a core part of a person's self-concept. Designed to capture the identity component of pro-environmental behavior — the extent to which people see themselves as "the kind of person who acts environmentally."
Environmental Sensitivity Scale
Assesses the degree to which individuals are sensitive to and aware of the natural environment in their daily lives. Captures formative childhood and adult experiences with nature that shape environmental identity and concern.
Environmental Sensitivity Scale
Measures environmental sensitivity — the predisposition to notice and be affected by the natural environment. Captures the degree to which individuals are emotionally responsive to nature, notice environmental changes, and feel personally affected by environmental events. Considered a foundational component of environmental literacy and a precursor to environmental concern.
Environmental Sensitivity Scale
Measures environmental sensitivity — a predisposition to take an interest in learning about and caring for the environment, often rooted in formative childhood experiences with nature. Environmental sensitivity is considered a foundational variable in models of responsible environmental behavior (Hungerford & Volk, 1990), preceding the development of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and action skills. The ESS assesses the degree to which individuals have developed a personal sensitivity to environmental issues, typically through direct nature experiences, significant life experiences, or role models.
Environmental Values Scale
A 31-item scale measuring environmental values in adults across three subscales: Pastoralism (preference for natural environments, conservation, and self-reliance in nature), Urbanism (preference for city life and human-built environments), and Environmental Adaptation (belief that humans can and should modify the environment to meet their needs). Derived from the Children's Environmental Response Inventory (CERI) by Bunting and Cousins (1985).
Environmental Values Short Form
A short-form version of the Environmental Values (EV) scale, derived from the Children's Environmental Response Inventory (CERI). Retains the same three subscales as the full EV — Pastoralism, Urbanism, and Environmental Adaptation — using the same 31 items but with a simplified scoring procedure. Designed for use with both adults and children. Validated by comparing subscale scores to half of the original CERI scores.
Environmental Worldview Behavior Scale
A brief 7-item behavioral measure asking respondents whether they have engaged in specific pro-environmental behaviors during the past two years. Covers both political behaviors (voting based on environmental positions, contacting government agencies) and personal behaviors (recycling, buying environmentally friendly products, donating to conservation groups). Developed by Nooney et al. (2003) in a study of North Carolina farmers and non-farmers.
Environmental Worldview Scale
A multidimensional measure of environmental worldview encompassing beliefs about the human–nature relationship, ecological limits, technological optimism, and the moral status of nature. Captures the full spectrum from technocentric (technology can solve environmental problems) to ecocentric (nature has intrinsic value and limits must be respected) worldviews.
Environmental Worry Scale
Measures the affective dimension of environmental concern — specifically, the degree to which individuals worry about specific environmental problems including air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and climate change. Distinguishes worry (anticipatory negative affect) from general concern (cognitive appraisal).
Feelings about the Environment and Behavior Scale
Measures the affective (emotional) component of environmental concern and its relationship to behavioral intentions. The FeB assesses the degree to which individuals experience positive and negative emotions in response to environmental conditions — including feelings of distress about environmental degradation, joy in natural settings, guilt about personal environmental impact, and hope about environmental futures. Developed to capture the emotional underpinnings of environmental concern that are not fully assessed by cognitive attitude measures.
General Conservation Behavior Scale
Measures frequency of conservation behaviors across multiple domains including energy use, transportation, food choices, and consumer behavior. Assesses both private-sphere and public-sphere behaviors.
General Ecological Behavior Scale
A comprehensive measure of general ecological behavior covering a wide range of environmentally relevant behaviors including mobility, energy use, food consumption, recycling, and social influence. Designed to capture the full behavioral repertoire of environmentally concerned individuals rather than focusing on a single behavioral domain.
General Ecological Behavior Scale
The original General Ecological Behavior Scale developed by Kaiser (1998) as a broad, Rasch-scaled measure of ecologically relevant behavior. Covers a wide range of behaviors including energy conservation, waste reduction, recycling, transportation, and consumer choices. Based on the premise that ecological behaviors form a single latent trait — general ecological behavior — that can be measured on an interval scale using Rasch analysis. One of the most widely used and psychometrically rigorous measures of pro-environmental behavior in the field.
General Ecological Behavior Scale — Adolescents
An adaptation of Kaiser's (1998) General Ecological Behavior Scale for use with adolescent populations. Measures the frequency of a broad range of ecologically relevant behaviors including energy conservation, waste reduction, recycling, transportation choices, and consumer behavior. Adapted to be developmentally appropriate for secondary school students, with items reflecting behaviors within the agency of adolescents (e.g., turning off lights, recycling, choosing environmentally friendly products). Uses Rasch scaling to produce interval-level behavior scores.
General Ecological Behavior Scale — Children
A further adaptation of Kaiser's General Ecological Behavior Scale for use with children (ages 8–12). Uses simplified language, concrete behavioral examples, and a pictorial response format to assess the frequency of ecologically relevant behaviors in younger children. Items focus on behaviors within children's daily experience and agency, such as turning off taps, recycling, picking up litter, and choosing nature-friendly activities. Validated across multiple countries as part of cross-cultural environmental education research.
General Ecological Behavior Scale — Revised
A revised and updated version of Kaiser's (1998) General Ecological Behavior Scale incorporating new behavioral domains relevant to contemporary environmental challenges, including digital consumption, food choices, and climate-relevant behaviors. The revision updates item content to reflect current ecological behaviors, removes outdated items, and adds new domains. Maintains the Rasch scaling approach of the original to produce interval-level behavior scores. Validated with adult samples in multiple countries.
Green Identity Scale
Measures the extent to which individuals identify with the "green" or environmentalist social group and incorporate environmental values into their personal and social identity. Captures both personal identification with environmentalism and perceived social norms within green identity groups.
Green Purchasing Behavior Scale
Measures the frequency of green purchasing behaviors, including buying environmentally certified products, choosing energy-efficient appliances, purchasing organic food, and avoiding products from environmentally irresponsible companies. Captures both the frequency and the motivation of green purchasing decisions.
Household Energy Conservation Behavior Scale
Measures the frequency of energy conservation behaviors in the home, including heating and cooling management, appliance use, lighting, and investment in energy-efficient technologies. Distinguishes between curtailment behaviors (reducing use) and efficiency behaviors (investing in better technology).
Human–Wildlife Conflict Attitudes Scale
Measures attitudes toward human–wildlife conflict situations, including tolerance for wildlife damage, support for lethal versus non-lethal management, and willingness to coexist with wildlife near human settlements. Particularly relevant for large carnivore and crop-raiding species conservation.
Inclusion of Nature in Self Scale
A single-item pictorial measure assessing the degree to which individuals cognitively include nature within their self-concept. Based on Aron et al.'s Inclusion of Other in Self paradigm, the INS presents seven pairs of overlapping circles labeled "S" (Self) and "N" (Nature), ranging from completely separate to completely overlapping. Respondents select the pair that best represents their relationship with the natural world. The measure is used to assess three types of environmental concern — egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric — and is valued for its brevity and cross-cultural validity.
Love and Beauty of Nature Scale
Measures the aesthetic and emotional appreciation of nature, capturing the degree to which individuals experience beauty, wonder, and love in natural environments. Developed within the positive psychology tradition to assess nature appreciation as a character strength and source of well-being.
Love of Animals and Love of Plants Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals feel affection, care, and emotional attachment specifically toward animals and plants as distinct aspects of the natural world. Developed to assess biophilia — the innate human tendency to affiliate with other living organisms (Wilson, 1984) — through separate subscales for animals and plants. The animal subscale assesses emotional bonds with both wild and domestic animals, while the plant subscale assesses appreciation for and attachment to plant life including trees, flowers, and vegetation. Useful for understanding the differential psychology of human relationships with different types of living organisms.
Milbrath Environmental Values Survey (Appendix B)
The environmental values survey instrument from Appendix B of Lester Milbrath's (1984) landmark book "Environmentalists: Vanguard for a New Society." Measures the degree to which individuals endorse a New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) worldview versus a Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) worldview across multiple value domains including beliefs about nature, economic growth, technology, social equity, and governance. One of the foundational instruments in environmental values research, predating and informing the development of the revised NEP scale. Covers a broader range of value dimensions than the NEP scale alone.
Nature Contact Scale
Measures the frequency and diversity of direct contact with natural environments in everyday life, including both incidental and intentional nature experiences. Captures green space visits, wildlife encounters, and sensory engagement with nature as predictors of well-being and pro-environmental behavior.
Nature Experience Quality Scale
Measures the quality of nature experiences, including the degree to which nature experiences are immersive, meaningful, restorative, and transformative. Captures both the immediate experiential qualities of nature contact (presence, attention, sensory engagement) and the longer-term outcomes (insight, transformation, lasting well-being).
Nature Exposure and Connection Scale
Measures both the frequency and quality of individuals' exposure to and connection with natural environments. Combines behavioral measures of nature exposure (time spent in nature, types of natural settings visited) with psychological measures of the quality of nature connection experienced during those exposures. Developed to address the limitation of measures that assess either nature exposure or nature connection in isolation, recognizing that the psychological benefits of nature depend on both the quantity and quality of nature contact.
Nature Exposure Scale
Assesses the frequency, duration, and quality of individuals' exposure to natural environments across multiple settings including urban green spaces, parks, wilderness areas, and domestic gardens. Distinguishes between passive exposure (viewing nature through windows) and active engagement (physical presence in natural settings).
Nature Identity Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals incorporate nature into their personal identity, including the sense that one is a nature person, that nature is central to one's self-concept, and that one's identity is expressed through nature-related activities and values. Shorter than the full EIS and designed for use in survey research.
Nature Relatedness and Well-Being Scale
Measures the relationship between nature relatedness and multiple dimensions of subjective well-being, including life satisfaction, positive affect, vitality, and meaning. Designed to capture the pathways through which nature connection contributes to human flourishing, including stress reduction, attention restoration, and meaning-making.
Nature Relatedness Scale
An 21-item scale assessing the affective, cognitive, and experiential aspects of individuals' connection to nature. Includes three subscales: NR-Self, NR-Perspective, and NR-Experience.
Nature Relatedness Scale — Short Form
A brief 6-item version of the Nature Relatedness Scale capturing the core affective and cognitive dimensions of individuals' connection to the natural world. Designed for use in studies where brevity is required without sacrificing validity.
Nature Relatedness Scale — Short Form
A brief 6-item version of the full Nature Relatedness Scale, designed for use in large surveys and multi-measure batteries where brevity is important. Captures the core dimensions of nature relatedness — self (personal connection to nature), perspective (recognition of humans as part of nature), and experience (desire for nature contact) — in a highly efficient format.
Nature Well-Being Index
A multidimensional index assessing the contribution of nature to subjective well-being across physical, psychological, and social dimensions. Measures how access to and engagement with natural environments supports restoration, stress recovery, social cohesion, and meaning-making in everyday life.
Nature-Based Stress Recovery Scale
Measures the perceived effectiveness of nature-based experiences for stress recovery, based on Ulrich's Stress Recovery Theory. Assesses the degree to which contact with natural environments reduces physiological and psychological stress, promotes positive affect, and supports recovery from demanding situations.
Nature-Based Well-Being Scale
Measures the contribution of nature contact and nature relatedness to multiple dimensions of subjective well-being, including hedonic well-being (pleasure and positive affect), eudaimonic well-being (meaning and purpose), and social well-being (connection and belonging). Designed to capture the full spectrum of nature's contributions to human flourishing.
New Ecological Paradigm Scale
A 15-item revised scale assessing pro-ecological worldview and beliefs about humanity's relationship with nature. Measures the degree to which respondents hold a "new ecological paradigm" versus a "dominant social paradigm."
New Human Interdependence Paradigm Scale
Measures endorsement of a worldview emphasizing human interdependence with nature and with other humans across generations and cultures. Developed as an extension of the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) to capture a more relational and systems-oriented worldview that emphasizes interconnectedness, reciprocity, and mutual dependence rather than simply ecological limits. The NHIP assesses beliefs about human embeddedness in natural and social systems, the importance of intergenerational and intercultural equity, and the value of cooperative relationships between humans and nature.
Outdoor Recreation Motivation Scale
Measures the motivations underlying participation in outdoor recreation activities, including nature appreciation, physical challenge, escape from daily life, social interaction, and spiritual experience. Based on the Recreation Experience Preference (REP) framework and widely used in parks and recreation research.
Perceived Environmental Performance Index
A perceptual measure assessing individuals' subjective evaluations of environmental performance — how well they believe their country, community, or organization is performing on key environmental indicators such as air quality, water quality, biodiversity protection, climate policy, and waste management. Distinct from the objective Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI), this instrument captures lay perceptions and evaluations of environmental performance, which may diverge substantially from objective indicators. Used in environmental psychology and political psychology research to understand public environmental satisfaction and policy support.
Perceived Restorative Components Scale for Children
A child-adapted version of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS) measuring children's perceptions of the restorative qualities of natural and built environments. Assesses the four components of Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) — Being Away, Extent, Fascination, and Compatibility — using simplified language and concrete examples appropriate for children aged 8–14. Used in environmental psychology and landscape architecture research to understand children's restorative experiences in different settings including schools, parks, and natural areas.
Perceived Restorativeness Scale
Measures the perceived restorative qualities of environments based on Kaplan's Attention Restoration Theory. Assesses four components: being away (escape from demands), extent (sense of a whole other world), fascination (effortless attention), and compatibility (fit between environment and personal inclinations).
Personal Investment in Environmental Protection and Pro-Conservation/Ecological Behavior Scale
A comprehensive measure of personal investment in environmental protection combining motivational, attitudinal, and behavioral components. Assesses the degree to which individuals are personally invested in environmental protection — including the importance they place on environmental outcomes, their sense of personal responsibility, their behavioral engagement, and their willingness to incur personal costs for environmental benefit. Developed within a personal investment theory framework (Maehr & Braskamp, 1986) applied to environmental behavior.
Place Attachment Scale
Measures emotional bonds between people and natural places. Includes subscales for place identity (place as part of self) and place dependence (place as functional support for goals).
Place Identity Scale
Measures the degree to which specific places are incorporated into an individual's self-concept and personal identity. Captures the symbolic dimensions of place — how places represent who we are, where we come from, and what we value — as distinct from functional attachment (place dependence) and emotional attachment (place attachment).
Place Meaning Scale
Measures the meanings people ascribe to natural places, including spiritual, aesthetic, recreational, and ecological meanings. Captures the symbolic and experiential dimensions of place meaning that go beyond functional attachment, including the role of natural places in personal narrative and cultural identity.
Pro-Environmental Behavior Scale
A multidimensional scale assessing self-reported frequency of pro-environmental behaviors across private-sphere (household) and public-sphere (civic) domains. Covers energy conservation, recycling, sustainable consumption, and environmental activism.
Questionnaire of Environmental Beliefs
Measures a broad range of environmental beliefs including beliefs about the causes and consequences of environmental problems, beliefs about human–nature relationships, beliefs about the effectiveness of individual and collective action, and beliefs about the role of technology and economic growth in environmental solutions. Developed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the belief structures underlying environmental attitudes and behavior. Distinguishes between factual beliefs (what is the case), normative beliefs (what ought to be the case), and efficacy beliefs (what can be done).
Questionnaire of Environmental Concern
A multidimensional measure of environmental concern assessing worry, awareness, and behavioral intention across specific environmental problem domains including climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, deforestation, and water scarcity. Developed to provide domain-specific environmental concern scores that can identify which environmental issues individuals are most and least concerned about. Useful for environmental communication research, policy evaluation, and understanding the structure of public environmental concern.
Recycling Behavior Scale
Measures the frequency and comprehensiveness of recycling behaviors, including sorting of different waste streams, composting, and participation in take-back schemes. Examines both habitual recycling (automatic, routine) and deliberate recycling (effortful, decision-based) and the motivational factors underlying each.
Recycling Behavior Scale
Measures the frequency and comprehensiveness of household recycling behavior across different material types (paper, glass, plastic, metal, organic waste, electronics). Assesses both curbside recycling participation and more effortful recycling behaviors such as taking materials to recycling centers, composting, and proper disposal of hazardous materials. Developed to provide a detailed behavioral measure of recycling that goes beyond simple participation rates to capture the breadth and consistency of recycling behavior.
Recycling Scale (Taylor & Todd)
A theory of planned behavior-based measure of recycling attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intentions developed by Taylor and Todd (1995). Assesses the psychological antecedents of recycling behavior within a decomposed theory of planned behavior framework that distinguishes between different types of beliefs (utilitarian, normative, and control beliefs) and their sources. One of the most theoretically grounded measures of recycling psychology, widely used in environmental behavior research.
Restorative Outcomes Scale
Measures the psychological outcomes of restorative experiences in natural environments, including stress reduction, attention restoration, mood improvement, and vitality. Designed to be administered after nature exposure to assess the degree to which the experience produced restorative benefits.
Revised Environmental Attitudes Scale
A revised and updated measure of general environmental attitudes, capturing affective (emotional responses to environmental issues), cognitive (beliefs about environmental problems), and conative (behavioral intentions) components. Designed to be more sensitive to contemporary environmental issues than earlier attitude scales.
Sharing Economy Participation Scale
Measures participation in sharing economy activities that reduce consumption and environmental impact, including tool libraries, car sharing, clothing swaps, food sharing, and collaborative consumption platforms. Captures both the frequency of sharing economy participation and the environmental motivations underlying it.
Single-Item Nature Connection Scale
A single-item measure of subjective connection to nature developed by Cervinka and Hefler (unpublished). Respondents rate their overall sense of connection to the natural world on a single scale. Single-item measures of nature connection have been shown to correlate substantially with multi-item scales such as the CNS and NR-6, and offer practical advantages in survey contexts where brevity is essential. The item captures the global, affective dimension of nature connectedness rather than specific cognitive or behavioral components.
Solastalgia Scale
Measures solastalgia — the distress caused by environmental change in one's home environment. Captures the grief, loss, and sense of place disruption experienced when familiar natural landscapes are degraded, altered, or destroyed. Increasingly used in climate change psychology and conservation research.
Solastalgia Scale
Measures solastalgia — the distress caused by environmental change in one's home environment. Captures the grief, loss, and psychological distress experienced when familiar landscapes are transformed by mining, climate change, drought, or other environmental disturbances. Developed in the context of open-cut coal mining impacts on rural communities.
Species Empathy Scale
Measures the capacity to empathize with non-human species, including the ability to take the perspective of animals and plants, feel concern for their welfare, and experience emotional responses to their suffering or flourishing. Particularly relevant for conservation psychology research on human–wildlife relationships.
State Connectedness to Nature Scale
A state (momentary) version of the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) designed to capture fluctuations in felt connection to nature in response to nature exposure, environmental contexts, or experimental manipulations. Items are reworded from the trait CNS to reflect current, in-the-moment feelings of connection to the natural world. Useful for experience sampling studies, nature-based interventions, and laboratory experiments examining the immediate psychological effects of nature contact.
Sustainable Consumption Scale
Measures attitudes and behaviors related to sustainable consumption, including reduced consumption, ethical purchasing, second-hand buying, product longevity, and rejection of planned obsolescence. Captures both the motivational (values, attitudes) and behavioral (purchasing decisions, consumption patterns) dimensions of sustainable consumption.
Sustainable Food Choice Scale
Measures the frequency and motivation of sustainable food choices, including plant-based eating, organic food purchasing, local food sourcing, and reduction of food waste. Captures both environmental motivations (reducing carbon footprint, protecting biodiversity) and health motivations for sustainable food choices.
Sustainable Transport Behavior Scale
Measures the frequency of sustainable transportation choices including public transit use, cycling, walking, carpooling, and avoidance of air travel. Captures both habitual transport behaviors and deliberate choices made for environmental reasons.
Topophilia Scale
Measures topophilia — the affective bond between people and place, including love of place, sense of belonging, and emotional rootedness in specific landscapes. Captures both the intensity of place attachment and the specific qualities of place (natural, built, social) that elicit attachment.
Urban Nature Connection Scale
Measures the degree to which urban residents feel connected to nature within city environments, including parks, street trees, urban wildlife, and domestic gardens. Designed to capture nature connection in contexts where access to wilderness is limited, recognizing that urban nature can support meaningful human–nature relationships.
Value-Belief-Norm Scale
Measures the causal chain from biospheric values through ecological worldview beliefs, awareness of consequences, and ascription of responsibility to personal norms for pro-environmental action. Based on Stern's Value-Belief-Norm theory.
Wildland Fear Expectancy Scale
Measures the degree to which individuals expect to experience fear, anxiety, or discomfort in wildland and wilderness settings. Assesses fear expectancies related to specific wildland hazards including wildlife encounters (bears, snakes, insects), getting lost, physical injury, weather, and darkness. Developed to understand psychological barriers to wildland recreation and nature engagement, particularly among urban populations with limited wildland experience. Fear expectancies are distinct from actual fear responses — they represent anticipated emotional reactions that influence recreation behavior and nature avoidance.
Wildlife Attitudes Inventory
Measures attitudes toward wildlife across multiple dimensions including appreciation, fear, hunting acceptance, and support for wildlife management. Widely used in human dimensions of wildlife research to understand public support for conservation programs.
Wildlife Value Orientations Scale
Measures basic values and beliefs about wildlife and wildlife management. Assesses mutualism (wildlife as part of human social community) and domination (wildlife as subordinate to humans) orientations.
Wildlife Value Orientations Scale
Measures basic value orientations toward wildlife, distinguishing domination (wildlife should be managed for human benefit) from mutualism (wildlife should be treated as individuals with rights similar to humans). Developed within the human dimensions of wildlife framework and widely used in wildlife management research.
Wildlife Watching Motivation Scale
Measures the motivations underlying wildlife watching and nature-based tourism, including learning, aesthetic appreciation, emotional connection, escape from daily life, and social interaction. Used in ecotourism research to understand visitor motivations and design effective wildlife watching programs.