Gratitude Letters to Nature: Effects on Self-Nature Representations and Pro-Environmental Behavior

Although gratitude is often defined as being an emotion that motivates reciprocity and connectedness between people, individuals can also experience gratitude to nonhuman entities such as nature. Despite expressions of gratitude to nature being common in cultures throughout world, little research has examined its implications for sustainability. In two studies, the current research explored how writing letters of gratitude to nature might increase pro-environmental behavior by leading people to see nature as large and by leading to more inclusion of nature in one’s self-concept. Study 1 compared the effects of nature gratitude letters to gratitude letters to built environments and to a neutral control condition, finding that nature gratitude letters led to greater inclusion of nature in self and greater nature size. Although there was no direct effect on intentions to act proenvironmentally, the nature gratitude letter had indirect effects leading to greater intentions via both increased nature size and nature inclusion. Study 2 aimed to replicate these findings and extend them by testing the role of two potential moderators: biospheric value orientation and personal norms of positive reciprocity. First, we found that the nature gratitude letter led to more nature inclusion, greater nature size, more selftranscendent emotion, and more pro-environmental behavioral intentions compared to the built gratitude letter. Second, an interaction was found such that the effect of the nature gratitude letter on pro-environmental behavioral intentions was only significant among those with average or greater endorsement of biospheric values. Implications for sustainability and emotion research are discussed.