Wednesday 22 July 09:50 - 11:20

Hall: 25 - Room 4 SPT

Chair and Presenter: Fornara Ferdinando

Division: Division 4: Environmental Psychology

The European Commission (2020, p. 5) defines NBS as solutions providing environmental, social
and economic benefits, and helping to build resilience, through the insertion of more natural
features into places.
This symposium addresses NBS with a focus on those values,beliefs,attitudes,experiences,
and practices that may promote individual and community well-being. Such focus is consistent with the empirical evidence concerning the importance of the natural features in contrasting
climate change effects,from one side,and triggering positive outcomes for individual well-being,
from the other side. In this regard, constructs such as connectedness to nature, restorativeness,
biospheric values, and environmental identity, just to name a few, have received increasing
attention in the field of environmental psychology.
Six contributions are included in this symposium,each of them addressing nature-based solutions
and related issues from different perspectives, expressing a broad range of methods in the
quantitative-qualitative continuum,from experimental to ethnographic.
Fornara and coll. focus on intentions to support NBS and their socio-psychological antecedents
through a survey study carried out in eight EU countries.
Ojala and coll. run an experiment studying the effect-in knowledge workers - of the exposure to
virtual nature on stress, well-being and nature connectedness in winter season.
Frankó and coll. examine the self-regulatory function of the experience of nature in workers facing
burnout and quiet quitting.
Townsend and coll. use interviews and ethnographic field observations - including virtual nature
tours-for a comparison in terms of behaviours, nature connectedness and forest stewardship
between two rural communities (Scotland and Peru), both living alongside forests.
Mishra and coll. explore the relationships between place practices and affordances provided to
humans and other-than-human species in a neighbourhood of Turku(Finland), through the use of
various qualitative methods, such as affordance mapping, "umwelt" analysis, behavioural
observation, and citizens' storytelling.
Kluvankova and coll.focus on nature-based governance through the proposal of a role board
game (Ecopoly) - tested in thirteen different EU regions - aiming at increasing awareness about
environmental risks and injustice in a multi-actor arena also including other-than-human species.