Urbanization linked to poor ecological knowledge, less environmental
action

Date:
May 4, 2022
Source:
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Summary:
A new study highlights a sharp contrast between urban and suburban
ways of thinking about coastal ecosystems. The authors of the study
used statistical and cognitive science techniques to analyze data
from a survey of 1,400 residents across the U.S. East Coast. Their
results showed that surveyed residents of urban centers often held
a more simplistic, and less realistic, understanding of coastal
ecosystems than residents in suburban areas. The research also
uncovered a lower propensity to take pro-environmental actions
among urban populations.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A new study by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators highlights a sharp contrast between
urban and suburban ways of thinking about coastal ecosystems.


==========================================================================
The authors of the study used statistical and cognitive science techniques
to analyze data from a survey of 1,400 residents across the U.S. East
Coast. Their results, published in the journal npj Urban Sustainability,
showed that surveyed residents of urban centers often held a more
simplistic, and less realistic, understanding of coastal ecosystems
than residents in suburban areas. The research also uncovered a lower propensity to take pro-environmental actions among urban populations. The
study provides evidence for an issue the authors refer to as urbanized knowledge syndrome, which may be detrimental to natural ecosystems and
hamper community resilience to natural disasters.

"We're hypothesizing that urbanization is not only impacting the
ecological dimension of the system, but also the social dimension of
the system, which may, in turn, cause people to disengage from positive environmental behavior.

It's something of a snowball effect," said Payam Aminpour, a NIST
postdoctoral research fellow and lead author of the study.

As part of NIST's Community Resilience Program, Aminpour and his
colleagues were particularly interested in gaining a better understanding
of what drives decisions surrounding resilience and adaptation measures
in urban areas. As a result of a survey devised and distributed by study co-authors at Northeastern University, they have been able to take a significant stride in the right direction.

The survey was targeted at coastal counties in metropolitan areas across
eight states, each of which featured shorelines with varying densities of roads, sea walls, ditches and other "gray" infrastructure. On the National Center for Health Statistics' six-level urban-rural classification scheme, surveyed residents largely resided in the three most urban levels,
ranging from city centers to suburbs.

The list of questions was designed to extract information about
respondents' demographics, understanding of ecosystems and whether or not
they had partaken in a list of pro-environmental activities, including
voting for political candidates based on environmental stances, voicing complaints to government agencies, contributing to conservation groups
and other actions.



========================================================================== Aminpour and colleagues at NIST used a technique called fuzzy cognitive
mapping to build visual representations of each respondent's environmental perceptions based on the survey data. The maps indicated the nature of perceived relationships between different environmental elements such
as how recreational areas influence marshes and vice versa.

As the authors of the study searched for patterns among the crowd of maps,
two distinct types emerged.

In the maps of some respondents, relationships tended to run in one
direction, exhibiting a way of thinking, or mental model, called linear thinking. In a linear thought process, a person might view sea walls
as shoreline fortifications that prevent erosion at no cost. Another
example of linear thinking could be the perception that overfishing is
only an issue for the fish.

The maps of other residents displayed more complex, two-way relationships, which indicated that these respondents thought about the environment as
a system. With this line of thinking, known as systems thinking, someone
might recognize that although sea walls provide structural integrity
to a shoreline, they alter the way that water flows along the shore and
could potentially accelerate erosion. In this kind of thinking, a person
may also acknowledge that, by diminishing fish stock, overfishing could
trigger greater restrictions on fishing activities in the future.

The latter of the two models is more likely to help people consider
nuanced aspects of human-nature interactions, such as the give-and-take dynamics between different elements.



========================================================================== Next, the team tried to identify factors that correlate with and could potentially explain what steers people toward either kind of model.

"We explored the association of these two distinct clusters of mental
models with many different aspects including education, age, political affiliation, homeownership," Aminpour said. "We found that, among those factors, urbanization and the percentage of shorelines armored with gray infrastructure had strong positive associations with the mental models of residents that showed more linear thinking." Conversely, their analysis
showed that suburban residents living amid a lower density of artificial structures than urban dwellers were more aligned with systems thinking, Aminpour said.

An important behavioral difference between the two was in the
self-reporting of behaviors that favored the environment. Linear thinking,
a trait largely manifested by urbanites, was linked closely to less pro-environmental action.

Further analysis involved making comparisons between every possible pair
of maps within the linear and systems thinking clusters to understand the diversity of models in each, Aminpour said. Greater diversity of thinking
has previously been connected to greater adaptability and resilience
in communities, but once more, the team uncovered more evidence for
urbanized knowledge syndrome. The group displaying linear thinking and
greater urbanization exhibited a large degree of uniformity, while the
systems thinking group was much more diverse.

Although these findings strongly tie environmental factors to lines of
thinking and behavior within coastal communities, there is still more
to learn before concrete conclusions can be drawn.

"We can't yet say which comes first. Do you have systems thinking so
you prefer to live in areas with more natural ecosystems, or does living
in less urbanized areas make you develop systems thinking? We need more rigorous experiments to find out," Aminpour said.

The researchers pose that answering these questions is of utmost
importance. If urbanization does indeed drive behavior, then urban
development and gray infrastructure may be fueling a self-serving feedback
loop that could damage ecosystems and community resilience.

Getting ahold of more data and concrete answers could strengthen the
case for more facilities and structures that incorporate nature, also
known as green infrastructure. And it would feed into an ongoing effort
at NIST to understand the value that different kinds of infrastructure
bring to communities.

This approach could potentially flip the loop, feeding into greater
systems thinking and greater sustainability.

"We have evidence that there's something more going on with
infrastructure. It may have a rippling effect through aspects of
communities, like the diversity of thinking about the environment," said Jennifer Helgeson, a NIST research economist and study co-author. "This
is hopefully the tip of the iceberg of what we can learn."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by National_Institute_of_Standards_and_Technology_(NIST).

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Payam Aminpour, Steven A. Gray, Michael W. Beck, Kelsi L. Furman,
Ismini
Tsakiri, Rachel K. Gittman, Jonathan H. Grabowski,
Jennifer Helgeson, Lauren Josephs, Matthias Ruth, Steven
B. Scyphers. Urbanized knowledge syndrome--erosion of diversity
and systems thinking in urbanites' mental models. npj Urban
Sustainability, 2022; 2 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42949-022- 00054-0 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220504082613.htm

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