Community geography, place identity, and environmental stewardship: What motivates volunteerism at environmental nonprofit organizations?
Date
2021-05
Authors
Lopez, Christina Wright
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Abstract
<p>Environmental stewardship is a growing phenomenon in the United States wherein stewarding, or voluntarily caring for the environment, is a crucial asset and component to many environmental nonprofit and community-based organizations. Community geography, a research approach that emphasizes participatory research and partnerships between universities and nongovernmental organizations, can help understand what motivates environmental stewardship to help retain and recruit volunteers, and help geographers build theory on human-environment interactions. As such, this dissertation assessed environmental stewardship through a community geography lens with a focus on place and scale.</p>
<p>To that end, this dissertation advances our understanding of the personal, social, and place-based factors that motivate voluntary environmental stewardship in general and based on organization type. Research findings support evidence of a novel “First Law of Environmental Stewardship” hypothesis and revealed a possible systematic link between spatial/operational scale of an organization and the motivational scale of the individual volunteer. This dissertation also contributes to the community geography literature in a way that engages spatial thinking and draws on key spatial concepts. However, it is novel in that it (a) does not feature applied Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) as a central research component and (b) employs scale of community partners in evaluation.</p>
Description
Keywords
Community geography, Environmental stewardship, First law of geography, Volunteerism
Citation
Lopez, C. W. (2021). <i>Community geography, place identity, and environmental stewardship: What motivates volunteerism at environmental nonprofit organizations?</i> (Unpublished dissertation). Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.