Research

INTRODUCTION

The consequences of climate change are increasingly devastating, and societies are still following unsustainable lifestyles that result in planetary boundaries being transgressed (Palmer et al. 2000, Chapin et al. 2011, Folke et al. 2011, International Social Science Council (ISSC) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 2013, United Nations 2019). There is wide agreement that despite all climate conferences (Conference of the Parties (COP)) and panels (IPCC 2022), we still observe an obsession with growth and an unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. So far, most proposed solutions to speed up the transition toward realizing the sustainable development goals (SDG)—and, in particular, the efforts to prevent and mitigate human-induced climate change—emphasize technological (i.e., geo-engineering), institutional (i.e., rules and taxations), or individual behavioral change (i.e., incentives). However, those approaches have failed to achieve desired outcomes (Folke et al. 2002, Zylstra et al. 2014).

How humans connect to nature is currently receiving more attention to explain this lack of progress. Scholars stress that humans not only depend on natural resources, but that “human–nature connectedness” (HNC) (Barragan-Jason et al. 2022) and “experience of nature” (EoN) (Kaplan and Kaplan 1990, Cazalis et al. 2023) enhance physical and emotional well-being as well as a sense of caring and responsibility for nature preservation (Miller 2005, Bratman et al. 2012, Russell et al. 2013, Soga and Gaston 2016, Artmann 2023). In contrast, disconnection from nature produces apathy, dis-affection, and resource depletion (Restall and Conrad 2015, Ives et al. 2017). Hence, a strong connection with nature may play an important role in the efforts to reduce detrimental human interventions into natural ecosystems and for stopping biodiversity loss (Roszak et al. 1995, Pyle 2003, Cumming et al. 2014). But the little evidence that is available suggests that HNC is declining on a global scale (Dorninger et al. 2017, Barragan-Jason et al. 2022, Cazalis et al. 2023).

This begs the question: “Which mechanism is needed to reconnect with nature?” Answering it first requires a better understanding of what “being (dis-)connected” with nature actually means. Second, we also need a better understanding of the conditions under which individuals (dis-)connect with nature. The present study addresses both issues.

Building on Rosa’s “Theory of Resonance” (Rosa 2016), we analyze the climate crisis as a crisis of relatedness, in which individuals tend to lose nature as a source for “resonance” and are considered increasingly “alienated” from it. Hartmut Rosa defines “resonance” as a meaningful, reciprocal relationship between individuals and nature, where one feels touched, transformed, and connected. In contrast, “alienation” refers to a detached, instrumentalized relationship with nature, where it is perceived as lifeless, indifferent, or merely a resource to be exploited.

Rosa’s theory brings a new perspective to the discourse of HNC because it focuses on the qualities of meaningful relationships and how cultural and historical context supports or hampers nature experiences. According to resonance theory, world views, belief systems, cultural affiliation, and institutional norms, as well as geography of a place, influence HNC (Rosa 2016). We are interested in the conditions under which such resonating and alienating relations between individuals and nature occur and how they are described in different cultures. Therefore, we apply “cultural consensus modeling” to investigate how two different cultures (western and indigenous) conceptualize their nature relations, i.e., what individuals with the same cultural background understand when talking about nature and how similarly or differently they relate to nature.

Our comparative multi-method research design, which combines in-depth interviews with a variety of techniques for the systemic elicitation of beliefs and knowledge, provides one of the first fine-grained mappings of nature-related experiences in two contrasting cultural settings.

Our study improves our understanding of HNC in two important ways. First, combining the theory of resonance with cultural consensus modeling allows a detailed exploration of resonance as a cultural phenomenon. Second, we enrich the emerging field of HNC research with one of the first comparative studies into the knowledge systems related to resonance in two different cultural settings (indigenous Māori and western Bodensee).

A CULTURAL CONSENSUS MODEL OF HUMAN–NATURE RESONANCE

Research on HNC defines nature as non-human-made social-ecological systems, thereby accounting for the complex interconnectedness between ecological and social life (Ives et al. 2017). It reports on landscapes, places, and ecosystems that are not yet completely domesticated by humans but still mainly inhabited by other species, habitats, and non-human organisms (Ives et al. 2017). Previous work on HNC has taken either a psychological cite (Conn 1998, Schultz 2000, Stilgoe 2001, Vaske and Kobrin 2001, Maller et al. 2008, Kahn et al. 2009, Nisbet et al. 2009, Soga and Gaston 2016, Whitburn et al. 2020), an economic and political science perspective (Norgaard 1988, Fischer et al. 2012, Yu et al. 2013, Monbiot 2013, Andersson et al. 2014, Denis 2014, Davies 2015, Martin et al. 2016, Göpel 2019), or a culturalist approach (Hatano and Inagaki 1987, Atran et al. 1999, Busch et al. 2018). Although all three perspectives improve our understanding of (changing) HNC at different levels of analysis (i.e., individual vs. collective), they remain largely disconnected. This disconnection inhibits our ability to understand different qualities of HNC and the underlying mechanisms shaping the human–nature relations. Here, we sketch out a theoretical framework that is able to reconcile all three perspectives by eliciting individual-level perceptions to map and compare cultures of relatedness at a collective level and historically contingent phenomena that we then use to shape this study.

Resonance Theory

Rosa’s Theory of Resonance is a reflection on the problems of late modernity, in which, according to Rosa, everything becomes available, attainable, and accessible. This leaves the individual increasingly emotionally detached from their social and physical environment, with the result that they lose their sense of direct experience, and feel increasingly alienated (Rosa 2012, 2016, 2019). Rosa’s central argument is: “if acceleration is the problem, then perhaps resonance is the solution [...]” (Rosa 2016:13). In the context of the environmental crisis, resonance theory points to the commodification of non-human organisms as integrated in accelerated, materialized global processes of utilization. Rather than positioning the exploitation of natural resources at the core of the climate crisis, the approach steps back and argues that in this high-speed world, humans lost nature as a room for experiencing resonance (Rosa 2016:77, Artmann 2023), thereby acknowledging the interconnectedness of economic, political, cultural, and psychological developments. Experiencing resonance and alienation in nature is not just a direct consequence of the physical environment, but contingent upon its interplay with biographical experiences, as well as socio-cultural and institutional conditions. Meta-processes that shape the cultural environment, such as globalization, modernization, individualization (Beck 1992, Gergen 2000, Castells 2010), also affect how individuals perceive, experience, and relate to nature. Formal rules and legislation, informal institutionalized routines, and habits influence how we think. Thus, some environments hold more potential for experiencing resonance than others. Resonance theory explicitly acknowledges that collective and individual-level conditions jointly shape experiences of resonance and alienation. Resonance is a mode of being in the world, characterized as responsive and transforming. It provides energy and increases a sense of self-efficacy (Rosa 2016). Individuals feel emotionally touched and part of a reciprocal, non-hierarchical, transformative connection between the world and the self.

Unlike resonating experiences, alienating relationships cost energy. Alienation defines a mode of relating to the world that impedes experiences of resonance. It is a repulsive relationship, characterized as silent, indifferent, mechanical, or instrumental, in which the self and the world form two separate entities.

Resonance needs alienation and vice versa. Alienation incorporates the potential of experiencing resonance. We feel detached from the world because we know that there is the potential to feel connected with and touched by the world as well. For example, taking a walk in a polluted industrial area might cause indifference toward the environment, but the potentially repulsive experience may at the same time prepare us to suddenly feel heartened by a flower garden around the corner. Culture and history influence whether nature is available and approachable and whether it fosters silent, indifferent, mechanical, or instrumental modes of relatedness.

In order to arrive at a fine-grained picture of how the self and nature relate to one another, we distinguish between two directions of this relationship. When the natural world is affecting one’s thoughts and feelings, it becomes a source of information and stimulation (i.e., world => self). When the self acts toward nature, uses its features, and behaves in it, the world becomes a space for individual purpose-driven experiences (i.e., self => world). Resonance and alienation can entail both, self => world and world => self relations. For example, nature can stimulate a positive mental and emotional state (world => self), eventually motivating the individual to engage in pro-environmental actions (self => world). Nature can also just trigger the individual desire to do something in nature, using its resources for pleasure and personal satisfaction (self => world).

In sum, resonance theory explicitly acknowledges that collective and individual-level conditions jointly shape experiences of resonance and alienation. But two issues still remain unexplored. First, little attention has been paid to how the co-dependent interplay between individual and collective experiences can be accessed. Second, although the theory of resonance emphasizes the importance of conceiving resonance and alienation as cultural phenomena, resonance experiences in non-Western societies have only very recently been analyzed (Sigurðsson and D’Ambrosio 2023). In order to address this incompleteness, we conceptualized resonating and alienating human-nature relations as cultural knowledge systems, using the cultural consensus model as a methodological framework to map and compare culture knowledge systems in a western and an indigenous culture.

The cultural consensus model

The cultural consensus model (CCM) allows studying connectedness to nature as a cultural phenomenon without neglecting intra-cultural variation. It conceptualizes culture as meaning about a specific knowledge domain that is shared by individuals of a cultural group (Romney et al. 1986, Atran and Medin 2008). Cultures are, therefore, not defined geo-politically, but as belief systems consisting of different knowledge domains.

As mental models can differ within and across cultures, CCM treats intra-cultural variability in mental representations not as noise but as a signal of the degree of cultural consensus (Caulkins and Hyatt 1999). Even though stemming from the same country or speaking a common language may foster an overlap in individual mental representations of nature and increase the salience of a certain imaginary of nature, consensus about what constitutes “nature” within a culture cannot be taken for granted. Individuals may attach different meanings to it. For example, in their research on children’s inductive reasoning, Atran and colleagues (2005) found an anthropocentric bias, in which humans serve as prototypes when classifying and analyzing animals because humans were the only biological entity that children living in urban agglomerations in North America were familiar with. They conclude that the lack of intimate contact with the ecological environment is responsible for cultural mental representations that favor human-centered perspectives on living kinds. Exposure and experience can influence biological reasoning and cultural mental representation of nature (see also: Herrmann et al. 2010). Which items (e.g., tree, lake, cat, etc.) individuals associate with nature provides insight into what is mentally salient, and, therefore, how they organize their thinking while unfolding commonalities and differences within and across cultures (Borgatti 1993). The degree of consensus about what members of one culture understand as nature can be lower and higher. In case of a high consensus (“coherent”) knowledge domain, there is a high degree of overlap in individual beliefs. In case of a low consensus (“idiosyncratic”) knowledge domain, beliefs are fragmented.

In sum, the CCM^[1] maps the collective mental representations of nature and experiences with nature and uses a statistical model to assess in how far the related beliefs of group members overlap. The culture of social collectives is characterized by the degree of consensus^[2] among its members, related to a specific knowledge domain.

The CCM provides insights into the internal structure of knowledge domains, like their coherence. But in order to understand the meaning that the members of a culture attach to the concepts and their interrelation, any CCM needs to be rooted in a more in-depth qualitative inquiry.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND DATA

Following earlier studies applying CCM methodology (Miller et al. 2004, Rinne and Fairweather 2012, Liu et al. 2015, Lacy et al. 2018, Bennardo 2023), we use a mixed-methods approach. This method combines a quantitative cultural consensus analysis of the mental representations of specific knowledge domains (“relation to nature,” “resonance,” and “alienation”) in two different cultures (Bodensee and Māori) with a qualitative content analysis of in-depth interviews with informants. To elicit the related belief systems, we apply techniques from the toolkit of cognitive anthropology (Spradley 1979, Weller and Romney 1988, Caulkins and Hyatt 1999; see Append. 1).

Case selection

Following a most-similar-system-design (MSSD) (Anckar 2008), two cultures were selected that are considered to be different in terms of their cultural belief system—people with indigenous Māori heritage living in New Zealand and locals from the Bodensee region in South Germany. Both cultures are known for their strong affinity for water, mountains, and forests.

Considering their philosophy of nature, Māori culture rejects the idea that humans are the sovereigns of nature (Patterson 1998) and considers humans, gods, plants, animals, mountains, and rivers as one entity with co-dependent well-being. People from Bodensee region are chosen as a comparison group because of their modern Western lifestyle and because they are part of the W.E.I.R.D (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) societies (Henrich et al. 2010). Bodensee’s nature is known to be commonly used for sports and tourism.

The selection of these two contrasting cases allows us to explore to what degree Rosa’s critique of late-modern societies actually holds in the case of Bodensee culture, as well as whether this contrasts with the related mental representation of nature in indigenous Māori culture.

Informant selection

Based on their alleged cultural competence, five informants from each cultural group were interviewed (n = 10).^[3] Snowball sampling was used to identify suitable informants in both cultures (Faugier and Sargeant 1997, Johnson 1999). From each culture, a reference person known to the researcher provided contact details for potential people from each culture that had the following three characteristics: enculturation (i.e., informants know the culture well without thinking about it explicitly), current involvement (i.e., informants who consider themselves as being part of and knowledgeable about the culture), and age (i.e., the informants for one culture should come from three different age groups: 20–30, 50–60, 80–90 yr) (Tremblay 1957, Spradley 1979, Bernard 1994, Merkend 2004, Naderifar et al. 2017).

The downsides and advantages of snowball sampling are well documented (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981, Atkinson and Flint 2001). The most prominent downsides are lack of representativeness and the neglect of isolates. In the context of our exploratory study, which was carried out through videoconferencing during the COVID pandemic, three advantages of snowball sampling outweighed its downsides. These were its ability to (1) access hard-to-reach populations, (2) leverage existing relationships to enhance trust between researcher and informants, and (3) save costs and time. Getting access for research purposes is particularly challenging in the case of the Māori community in New Zealand.^[4] For the Bodensee informants, the same recruitment method was applied to ensure comparability, even though the main author is from this region. Potential informants were invited in English and German via email. All of them responded positively and agreed to participate.

The interview process

Due to travel restrictions during the COVID pandemic, all interviews were conducted online via Zoom by the main author. Interview sessions started with a photo elicitation exercise to ease the situation and build rapport. Interviewees were asked to indicate how similar or dissimilar a presented picture of nature is to the nature they regularly encounter (see Append. 1). The subsequent “free-listing exercise” (Weller and Romney 1988, Borgatti and Halgin 2010) elicited concepts associated with nature and nature relations, resulting in free-lists that constituted the input for the consensus analysis (Ryan et al. 2000, Quinlan 2005). The session finished with a semi-structured interview, in which informants were prompted to elaborate in more detail about their culture’s resonating and alienating relation to nature. Sessions with Bodensee informants lasted at most 1 hr, compared with 1–2 hr for Māori informants (see the discussion section for a reflection on this difference). In a final debriefing, we explained the purpose of our questions and presented the theoretical background.

In the following we will refer to people with Māori heritage and people from Bodensee as the “Māori or Bodensee sample” and “Māori or Bodensee informants” to avoid misleading generalizations from five informants to a whole population.

Data collection

Consensus analysis

For each informant, three so-called free-lists were elicited. With this exercise, items that are associated with nature and the relation to nature were identified, while assessing each item’s relative psychological and cultural salience (Weller and Romney 1988, Borgatti 1993, Caulkins and Hyatt 1999, Ryan et al. 2000, Brewer 2002, Quinlan 2005).

First, we assessed how mental representations of nature differ across cultures. On behalf of their culture, informants were asked to list all elements that describe nature and the relation to it: (1) “Which kinds of nature come to your mind?” (2) “From your experience, which kinds of nature do people from your culture usually encounter?” (3) “What are the most common forms of relations that are practiced by people with Māori heritage/from Bodensee?”

Second, we distinguished the two directions of how individuals relate to nature. The self => world relation is elicited by the following question: “Thinking of your community, what do you know about how interaction with nature is practiced by members of your culture? If they are in nature, what do they do?”

For the world => self relation, we asked: “When they are in nature, what do you think members of your culture experience, how is nature perceived?” “How do they feel?” (see Append. 1).

Content analysis

Using in-depth interviews after the free-listing exercise, we elicited detailed insights about how each culture describes nature, resonance, and alienation. For our inquiry into nature, we used guiding questions like “When you think of your culture, can you describe a moment that is exemplary of how your culture relates to nature?” or “If you talk to others with Māori/Bodensee background, what would they say?” (For a full list of questions, see Append. 1.)

Using contrasting questions, we investigated what experiences of resonance and alienation look like, how they are described, and what are their major antecedents in each culture. Rather than asking informants directly, we referred to moments that are representative of being in resonance with or feeling alienated from nature.

For resonance, we first asked: “Can you describe a situation in which people with your cultural background feel supported by nature?” For alienation we asked: “Can you describe a situation in which people with your cultural background feel that they lost touch with nature, that they are rejected by it?”

Data analysis

Consensus analysis

As part of the data preparation, all individual free-lists were harmonized to the final entry term to make items and free-lists comparable across informants. First, item labels were aligned. For example, “boat” and “canoe” are considered synonyms and, therefore, subsumed under the entry term “waka,” whereas “ducks,” “swans,” and “grebes” are kept as individual items because they are considered to be subdomains of “birds.” When informants referred to personal perspectives instead of speaking on behalf of their cultural group or past experiences, we decided to include those descriptions so as to not undermine the original goal of completeness when applying free-listing. Arguably, personal perspectives are likely to be shared by other people of the culture as well, thus, part of the domain and useful to cover internal variation of the knowledge structure. All entry terms used for the data analysis were stored in a dictionary to generate transparency and traceability (see Append. 2: Dictionary). Afterward, the final free-lists for each informant were combined into an informant-by-subject matrix, assigning the value “1” for each item mentioned by the informant and “0” if the item wasn’t mentioned. The resulting matrix served as input for conducting a cultural consensus analysis, performed with the software UCINET (Borgatti et al. 2002; see Append. 3).

For the data analysis, six diagnostic steps were carried out on the ten final free-lists (five aligned individual free-lists per culture).

First, Caulkins and Hyatt (1999) suggest using at least 20 items listed after one another in ranking order for conducting the analysis, a criterion met by all our final free-lists.

Second, in order to know whether our assumptions about a “coherent cultural domain” (i.e., nature, self => world, world => self) hold and responses from our informants reflect a single culture (i.e., Bodensee or Māori), the subject-by-subject-matrix (i.e., 5 x 5) had to show a single factor structure (Romney et al. 1986). Coherence is indicated by the ratio between the first and second eigenvalue being greater than or equal to 3.0 (Blair and Lovecraft 2020). In some cases, this criterion of coherence is met, whereas for other cultural domains, we could not find sufficient consensus as we will elaborate on in more detail in the results section.

Third, we measured “individual competence scores” to assess individual’s knowledge about the knowledge domain. Negative scores indicate that the informant’s responses differed strongly from the rest. This was the case for the knowledge domain Bodensee Nature, Bodensee world => self relation, and Māori self => world relation. However, this can also be influenced by the fact that the algorithm corrects for guessing (Romney et al. 1986, Weller 2007).

Fourth, we counted how many informants referred to each item to estimate an “answer key”: the more often items were mentioned, the more mentally salient they are considered (Bernard 1994). We were not able to estimate an answer key for the Bodensee self => world relation, which is discussed in the results below.

Fifth, based on the frequency and ranking of items in the individual free-lists, nonmetric “multi-dimensional scaling” (MDS) was applied (Weller and Romney 1988, Bernard 1994, Calkins and Hyatt 1999, Borgatti and Halgin 2010) to assess (a) clustering (concepts close to each other are more similar) and (b) uniqueness (concepts on the edges are more distinct or unique, meaning they were mentioned less frequently than the concepts at the core). Models with a stress below 0.1 show a good fit and, therefore, are “likely to reflect some reality about the cognitive world of the people being studied” (Bernard 1994:502; see also Blair and Lovecraft 2020). We only present the MDS for items associated with nature, as these insights are considered to complement the subsequent qualitative data analysis.

Finally, model fit was assessed by checking three assumptions: “common truth”^[5] assumes that there is one correct answer applicable to all respondents: either they know or they guess correctly. “Conditional independence” assumes that each informant responds independently. “Homogeneity of items” suggests that the questions have the same degree of difficulty, and informants are expected to rely on their knowledge to provide answers (Weller 2007, Borgatti and Halgin 2010). The latter assumptions are considered to be met, based on our interview process: informants were interviewed separately, and there was no variation in how difficult the questions were experienced.

Content analysis

Thematic content analysis was used to inductively build a heuristic model of causal and associative relationships among socio-spiritual-ecological components of relating to nature as perceived by the members of each culture. In a repetitive cycle of re-coding and categorization, each transcript (Append. 6) of the semi-structured interview was analyzed to identify main concepts and sub-concepts. Perceived causal relations in the domain nature, resonance, and alienation were extracted (Carney 1972, Sackmann 1992, Hsieh and Shannon 2005). This inductive theory formation follows Caulkins and Hyatt’s (1999) approach to structural knowledge analysis, which assesses the degree of shared knowledge among individuals and variations in cultural understanding. In order to gain insights on cross-culturally stable (i.e., consistent) organizing principles, we compared the final cultural models and asked: are there differences between people with Māori heritage and people from Bodensee in reasoning and experiencing resonance and alienation?

CONSENSUS ANALYSIS: CONCEPTUALIZING AND RELATING TO NATURE

Representations of nature

Bodensee

In the final nature free-list of the Bodensee sample, 218 items were mentioned in total, and 27 items were mentioned more than once. Informants do not show consensus about what nature is (eigenvalue ratio 0.50; see Table 1 and the negative competence scores for all informants^[6]).

As there was no agreement among Bodensee informants, the resulting answer key needs to be interpreted with caution. Our consensus analysis of nature representations of Bodensee informants reveals an idiosyncratic knowledge structure. Figure 1 shows that each informant is referred to a cloud of items, whereas the center with shared items is rather empty in comparison. For example, Vögel (birds) were mentioned by all informants of the Bodensee sample, listed on top of their final free-lists, and located in the center accordingly. Other concepts that were only mentioned by one informant, such as Alpen (Alps) or Bäche (creeks), are only part of informant 2’s cloud.

To assess the proximity pattern of the 27 items that were mentioned more than once, we analyzed the frequency and ranking of the items obtained in the individual free-lists. Visual representation of the results of the MDS (see Fig. 2) shows which items can be considered to be similar (close to another) and which ones are dissimilar (large distance between them).

In line with our findings on non-coherence, the center shows fewer concepts than the periphery. Wiesen (meadows), Weiden (pastures), and Wald (forest) are positioned on the upper right, indicating that they are only mentioned by a few informants. The MDS provides a good representation of the informant’s knowledge structure (stress value 0.08, iterations = 38; Bernard 1994, Blair and Lovecraft 2020).

Māori

The final free-list of Māori informants contains a total of 139 items, of which 32 items were mentioned more than once, reflecting the culturally shared representations of nature. Consensus is high (eigenvalue ratio 16.66; see Table 1). The density of items in the center of Fig. 3 further indicates informants agree strongly about what nature is.

However, the negative competence scores^[6] of informants M3 and M4 suggest some intra-cultural variation. This may be due to differences in age and personal experience with Māori culture: M3 is the only one who grew up in a traditional way, M4 was the youngest interviewee of the Māori sample.

The MDS on the shortened 32 x 32 correlation matrix shows the similarities between the items mentioned more than once (see Fig. 4). The model shows a good fit (stress value 0.08, 31 iterations), i.e., it provides a good representation of the informants’ cognitive representations of nature. Ancestors, Earth Mother, Mountain, Land, Sky Father, Forest, and Birds form a cluster of words that are jointly mentioned by most informants. The position of Attua and Genealogy in the periphery of the space suggests that these concepts are not a commonly shared mental representation of nature, instead reflecting idiosyncratic beliefs.

Representations of self–world relations

Bodensee

Almost all Bodensee informants intuitively elaborated on what they do and how they act in nature. Consensus analysis on 94 shared items reflecting self => world relations (eigenvalue ratio 12.23; Table 1) suggests strong consensus with regard to how people from Bodensee behave in nature. Examples for shared concepts are active search, walking, leisure, short contact with nature.

Only informant B3 deviates from the rest, as indicated by negative competence scores. This could be explained by the informant’s older age as well as B3 misinterpreting the interview questions. Throughout the interview, this informant was elaborating mainly about the past and how relating to nature ought to be, instead of describing the status quo. Unlike the others, this informant used specific terms and referred to niche knowledge. This is also reflected in the visual representation of the consensus analysis (see Fig. 5). Although informants B2 and B5 overlap in their understanding of what people from Bodensee do in nature, informant B3 only shared a few items with the others.

Māori

Compared with the Bodensee sample, the self => world consensus analysis of how Māori behave in and act toward nature yielded opposite results. The analysis performed on 128 items indicates an idiosyncratic knowledge structure (eigenvalue ratio 0.50; see Table 1). As all individual competence scores are negative, we can assume that how Māori informants act toward nature is individually rather than culturally driven. Nevertheless, the cluster at the center of Fig. 6 suggests that even though most associations are idiosyncratic, some are shared.

Representations of world–self relations

Bodensee

Consensus analysis of the 43 items representing world => self relation show low agreement (eigenvalue ratio 0.50; see Table 1). All competence scores are negative, and there is no answer key (see Append. 2). How people from Bodensee feel when being in nature is different for every individual and not rooted in shared understanding. Although informants B1, B2, and B4 share some representations, as visualized in Fig. 7, they do not reach the threshold for cultural consensus.

Māori

Consensus analysis on the free-list of 64 items showed high agreement (eigenvalue ratio 3.99; Table 1) with regard to how Māori informants feel when being in nature (i.e., world => self). There is strong cultural consensus about the feelings and emotions that nature evokes in Māori informants (see Fig. 8).

Similar to the consensus analysis of “kinds of nature,” the third informant, M3, is the only one showing negative competence scores as well as many more individually held representations of the world => self relation (see Append. 1). The recurring deviation from the majority suggests that there might be systematic differences between the third informant and the rest.

Intercultural similarities and differences

For the Bodensee sample, we could transfer almost all elicited concepts into the final free-list because the informants mentioned the items in a very structured and precise way. However, we had to filter the stories told by Māori informants for specific concepts. Informants’ feedback suggests that they experienced the exercise as very open, resulting in free elaborations on commonly practiced relationships with nature. Due to fast and intuitive responses, how they relate to nature appears highly salient. In contrast, informants from Bodensee experienced the assignment as very abstract. It was difficult to gather enough items about their relation to nature. This suggests that questioning their relation to nature is rather unusual to them and required additional mental effort to reflect upon.

Another difference during the elicitation process was the taxonomic reasoning during the free-listing exercise (i.e., categorizing nature into classes). Bodensee informants described tangible natural features, such as specific areas in nature (i.e., Bodanrück [area in the region]; Weiden [meadows]) and biological types (e.g., Vögel [birds]). In contrast, Māori informants referred to broader concepts (e.g., forest, ocean) that have a culturally specific connotation.

When listing kinds of nature, most Bodensee informants structured their account such that the lake Bodensee served as the reference point: from below the water toward the surface, or from the lake toward its urban periphery. In contrast, Māori informants organized their knowledge according to culturally important natural features, such as ancestors, mountains, and the ocean.

Our key result is that the two cultures show opposite patterns in how they relate to nature. Whereas beliefs about how one behaves in and acts toward nature are shared in Bodensee culture, there are large differences in the emotional reactions triggered by nature and vice versa for Māori culture.

CONTENT ANALYSIS: EXPERIENCING AND EXPLAINING NATURE, RESONANCE, AND ALIENATION

Bodensee

Nature

Harmony, the combination of water and horizon, as well as peace and purity are central features shaping the informants’ conceptualization of nature. The degree to which humans interfere with nature serves as an evaluation criterion to assess whether nature is still perceived as “natural,” rather than “organized.” Informants report that “untouched” nature can be experienced, especially in officially protected areas.

And then there is the Wollmattingerried [area in the region], which is pure nature. It’s mainly reeds, and the irises bloom there in spring. It’s a very strict nature reserve and you’re only allowed in with a guide. But for me it’s beautiful nature. (B5)

Nature is approached through institutions (e.g., clubs), activities (e.g., sports), or visualization (e.g., panoramic views of landscapes). Different hobbies such as rowing, sailing, biking, or walking are typical means to enter the natural environment.

For example, [fishing] is a way of entering this nature, it’s a way of establishing something like that through sports clubs—canoeing, surfing, SUP, there are similar ways that are almost always the same (...). (...) yes, the longing for a way to enter this landscape via functional means, of a sporting and non-sporting nature. (B4)

Seeing the natural landscapes is of major importance for the experience. Whether and how nature is approached strongly depends on the personal availability of time. As nature provides an opportunity for sports, pleasure, and enjoyment, it is primarily used to counterbalance a stressful daily life and finding relaxation.

People are under stress today, all day long, and then they need to balance and this would work best if they can go on a boat afterwards: anchoring, swimming, then that’s relaxation, relaxation. (B3)

Informants structure their perception with the following oppositions: the expectable vs. unexpectable in nature, organized vs. “natural” nature, planned vs. spontaneous engagement with nature, nature with and without humans, being passive or active in nature, being in or being with nature, seeing nature as something innate to us or an endless resource one can use (see Table 2).

Bodensee informants refer to nature based on their individual experiences and what they personally do in nature. Nevertheless, what they do and experience is similar (i.e., coherent self => world relation).

Resonance

Resonating experiences are described as harmonious and associated with amazement (B5), joy (B2, B3, B5), and safety (B2, B4). The internally perceived positive change is fostered when one’s expectations of clean, quiet, peaceful, and untouched nature are met.

It’s so hauntingly beautiful, you can’t get enough of it, it’s never boring, it’s always a new experience, even though it’s so old. (B5)

The experience can be an immediate sensational response to the natural environment encountered, without conscious engagement (B2, B5). However, resonance as a moment of venting (Abreagieren; see all Informants) can also be a bodily experience in which Bodensee informants actively long for nature with their whole self. Resonance is an experience of positive, sensational transformation during and after being in nature, where one becomes relaxed, calm, and refreshed (see all Informants).

And some jog, others walk, and others go with the dog, it doesn’t really matter. But it’s just nice, you have fresh air and you come back and just feel different, like now I can go on again. (B2)

Alienation

The experience of alienation is contrasted to resonating with nature, describing an inner state of tension and poverty. Reported as loss of control and loss of orientation, alienation is associated with one being powerless vis-à-vis nature. The experienced panic and fear in situations like extreme weather events are immediate emotional responses that may dissolve shortly after.

The hailstorms, torrential rain, or where you think “whoaa,” you’re very quickly reduced to thinking, Man, now you thought you had the right clothes on. No, that’s not good at all. (B2)

When being repelled by nature, Bodensee informants show longer-lasting sensational responses of feeling tired, worried, and having to concentrate on coping with this disturbing experience:

And then there is construction activity, both vacation resorts and normal houses. And then also places where there is a lot of tourism, where there is a lot of stone, and a lot of people, and a lot of garbage, but also the cycle paths along the lake, which have nothing to do with recreation and nature in the high season. It’s like being on the highway, where all you really have to do is make sure you don’t get run over by someone and knocked out. (B1)

The relation between resonance and alienation

Considering that resonance is a positive transformation, the following question is: of what? Being in the office, working, and looking at the computer screen are activities that informants associate with an uninteresting smell, a restricted view, and stress (i.e., alienation). In contrast, overseeing the landscape and smelling nature’s diversity are associated with feeling refreshed and relaxed (B1, B2) (i.e., resonance). Going into nature is an attempt to temporarily escape from alienating contexts.

When describing alienation, the experience of resonance (i.e., relaxation) serves as a reference point: if one’s expectation of feeling relaxed in nature is not met, one feels alienated. Conversely, resonance as a transformational quality (i.e., a change in one’s whole self), is always juxtaposed to moments in which its experience is disturbed.

One informant illustrates the interdependence between resonance and alienation when elaborating on a visit from a friend who worked in an air-conditioned office with artificial light for all his career. During a boat trip on the Lake of Constance (i.e.. Bodensee), her friend became emotionally overwhelmed by the natural beauty surrounding him. He started to cry and to question his life. The story offers central insights: first, it uses contrasts between settings, such as office vs. lake and artificial light vs. natural beauty. Secondly, a long and constant exposure to alienating experiences in one area of life (i.e., work) apparently has the potential to intensify experiences of resonance in another area of life (i.e., nature).

In Bodensee culture, alienation appears to be a necessary condition to experience resonance, forming a dynamic, dialectical relationship between a state of tension and a state of relaxation.

Māori

Nature

Informants emphasized the importance of the colonial context, of speaking their language, and of spending time in their homeland. Māori culture and nature are interrelated. The creation story is the backbone and provides the cultural concept of what nature actually is: home through genealogy. It not only attributes ancestry to their land but also serves as their source of identity (i.e., knowing where you come from).

We don’t believe we are Adam and Eve, that’s not our creation story. Our creation story is when papathuanuku and ranginui separated, that’s when the world was born. But then, common sense and the scientist says Adam and Eva or evolution or this, I guess each their own. But I think that’s why we feel really connected. (M5)

According to their belief system, nature is approached through personification. Through stories and legends, the cultural past is remembered, and the spiritual–cultural associations of nature are sustained (all Informants). Performing arts (M1, M4), applying ticanga (all Informants), or engaging in ceremonial activities (all Informants) are means to practice Māori culture. Through Ticanga, behavioral social norms, the relation to nature is established and solidified over generations (M1, M4). Its practical and spiritual dimensions guide individuals as well as the connection to nature for Māori collectively. Although the main purpose of nature stems from back in the days when ancestors were still living on the land, today, nature is a central source for learning. Teaching others and learning from one another are key for relating to nature. Accordingly, speaking the language means being able to share cultural knowledge about ancestors, hence, communicating the importance of nature, making sense of the world, and fostering an emotional bond (M2, M5).

So we were colonized and, in that process, we lost our identity. They took our language away, they educated us in their system, they brought their religion, they were and they always will be forever and ever, there will be people who hold on tight to their customs and their language. But in general, we kind of lost ourselves for a hundred years. Even my mum, when they went to school, they used to get punished when they spoke the language. And that’s just the language. But if you take the language of someone, you might as well just take the culture. Because a lot of what you identify as is through your customs and your signs and stories. (M5)

For Māori informants, nature is a spiritual concept. How one conceptualizes nature depends on three conditions: inherited vs. learned cultural knowledge, speaking vs. not speaking Māori, and one’s personal learning process (see Table 2).

Resonance

For Māori, resonance is an emotional connection with nature that evolves when being in nature and attaching cultural meaning to their homeland after the colonial past. Informants refer to “remembering one’s family,” a rather intimate, constant experience that results from one’s cultural identity. “Healing” is, therefore, not a physical but an emotional process that takes place when feeling supported by nature. Being in resonance has “cleansing” effects, in which the self actively engages with nature and one’s whole mental state. People rooted in Māori culture focus on teaching kids so that they understand their culture, relate to nature, and experience resonating effects in the long run (M1, M2).

It’s one of the things you cannot describe, but its imminent within your spiritual being, and I get that when I am walking along the sea. (...). I get lost in it, when I look at the waves. I am imamate, my emotions run in a transformational way and in a very positive way uplifting and thank goodness it’s all good things (laughing). You know, how the mind let go. (...). Whenever I go back home, go down the forest, where my “pa” is, that’s one of the things where I get a great fill up. (M5)

Alienation

Whereas informants used various words to make their experience of resonance explicit, the description of alienation is limited to a few, commonly shared central terms: disconnection from nature, forgetting who you are and where you come from. Either alienation is mentally less salient, meaning informants are not used to make those experiences explicit, or the experience can be fully reduced to these few commonly shared concepts.

All informants reported that alienation affects the whole self, in which the contact with nature and one’s identity is lost. Even though experienced by the individual, it is not described as a personal but as a collective experience.

The references to their colonial history suggest that it is their past that caused collective disconnection from nature. The growing intrusion of technology, which was mentioned as a result of colonialization and subsequent urbanization, dissolved Māoris’ resonating relation (i.e., being in harmony) with nature.

Being here in the city, I don’t really go out much, like go for walks (...). So probably that’s a way how I can lose touch with nature. (M2)

Like a tipping point, alienating experiences entered Māori life with colonialization. Rather than being a momentary experience, the alienating cultural past serves as the reference point today: “Pre-technology we were in harmony with nature.” (M3)

Alienation from nature is a continuous experience, a (mental) state of being and dependent on one’s cultural identification.

The relation between resonance and alienation

Resonance theory posits that resonance includes moments of unavailability, which cannot be taken for granted. However, for Māori, resonating with nature is always possible, given that they are connected to their cultural roots (M1, M2, M3, M5). When you identify with the land, it is possible to attach cultural meaning to nature and consciously connect with it personally. At home (i.e., in their pa [village]) and when “plugging into the environment” (M1), nature supports and carries you. Moreover, resonance theory claims that resonance presupposes overcoming alienation. For Māori, alienation and resonance are continuous and long-lasting experiences and appear to be separating states of being: once established, they dominate the relationship to nature. Either you are alienated (i.e., you forgot where you come from) or in resonance (i.e., you know where you come from).

TOWARD HEURISTIC CULTURAL MODELS OF RESONANCE AND ALIENATION

Based on our analyses of how each culture conceptualizes their relation to nature, we synthesized a heuristic model of HNC for each culture (Figs. 9, 10; Table 3).

Bodensee

Bodensee informants long for and expect to encounter untouched nature, characterized by peace, purity, and cleanliness. Those nature-dependent drivers of resonance are essential for feeling relaxed, calm, and refreshed.

Human-dependent drivers of resonance refer to how one engages with nature. Sensing, hearing, smelling (sensational factors) the diversity of nature causes relaxation. Different visual stimuli provide a change of perspective, which helps to counterbalance stress. Being active in spontaneously accessible nature and seeing the harmony of natural chaos, clears views and reduces inner tension. Depending on the availability of free time and distance from where they live, individuals perform different activities to enter nature (activity factors). When “natural nature” is an integrated part of one’s daily life it is easy to get in motion and immerse oneself, leading to mental and physical relaxation. Joint nature-related group experiences as well as more institutionalized social practices enable people from Bodensee to engage with nature together, causing a feeling of home, pleasure, and joy.

For this culture, how the self directs their actions toward nature (i.e., self => world) is key. Smelling fresh air or temporarily escaping into nature from daily life are highly individualized and short-lasting experiences of resonance.

Our results are in line with critiques of post-modern lifestyles driven by processes of individualization, globalization, or urbanization. Human-dependent drivers of alienation, like the pace of city life, construction sites (B1-4), or a crowded tourist destination with manmade chaos and overstimulation of the whole Bodensee region (B1-4) are the opposite of relaxing and imply rather long-lasting experiences of several hours or even a constant state of being (B1-3).

On the individual level, “modern” working environments are a potential source of alienation, due to a “limited view,” monotonous smell, and artificial light (B1-5).

The less nature is “natural”, or the more humans interfere, the stronger the experience of alienation. In other words, for Bodensee informants, alienation is a feeling of being disturbed by people. Relaxation is intended, and tension avoided. When the ideal of nature is not available, the tension cannot be turned into relaxation. Bodensee informants are aware of the constant threat by the many ways in which humans interfere with nature, which heightens their appreciation of and desire for nature-related resonance experiences. This is in line with resonance theory’s argument that humans are an innately resonance-seeking species that strives to avoid alienation, and that experiences of alienation may enable and amplify experiences of resonance and vice versa.

Māori

The central source of resonance is Māoris’ world view (i.e., genealogy). It determines whether or not nature is approached via their creation story and considered home. The understanding of nature derived from the past (cultural heritage), is the conceptual foundation for how culture, people, and nature interact physically, emotionally, and mentally today.

The spiritual–cultural dimension includes core elements of the collective cultural history and facilitates individual cultural socialization processes. Teaching others, practicing ceremonial activities, following Ticanga, and telling stories reinforce shared mental models of relating to nature. They allow one to build an emotional and spiritual connection, but also to understand oneself in the context of Māori cultural heritage.

The personal dimension of resonance refers to one’s personal presence in nature. Based on their cultural knowledge, individuals are able to attribute spiritual–cultural meaning to specific natural features that serve as facilitators (M1) for connecting with the culture in a practical and spiritual way.

Nature is considered home, a place where your tribe (i.e., marae) and your village (i.e., pa) are. The pa is where one identifies with the land and builds emotional bonds (all Informants). Listening to and observing nature increases personal knowledge about natural processes, heightening awareness and respect. With the right (cultural) knowledge, you know how to listen, how to read, and how to understand nature’s clues (M2, M3). Important is how cultural meaning is translated into one’s personal relationship with nature (i.e., world => self). For Māori culture, feeling at home incorporates the commonly shared cultural past but is situated at the individual level: nature is about one’s identity, and therefore, the resonating relationship to it is an intimate one.

Colonialization was a central driver for losing touch with cultural heritage individually as well as collectively. Consequently, urbanization and the loss of language caused loss of identity (all Informants). Many people lost their culturally specific understanding of how the world came about. Being disconnected from ancestry and the natural environment, they forgot where they came from and who they are, resulting in collective alienation.

Even though the loss of heritage holds for the whole cultural group, some of its immediate consequences are a matter of degree and can differ across members of the cultural group (i.e., some are more disconnected than others).

In the process of urbanization, informants refer to the meta-processes industrialization and technologization, which are part of the colonial change. Using technological devices or being in bigger cities are reasons why and when Māori informants do not feel at home in nature. Living in both worlds (i.e., Māori and Western) or in contrast to destroyed nature in Europe (M1, M3, M5), strengthens their awareness and appreciation of their home land. The experienced disconnection of “Big City Life” allows them to actually reconnect consciously with nature when coming back home (M2, M3, M4).

The individual mental states (personal dimension of alienation) determine whether or not one feels alienated from nature. With a closed mind, one cannot let go and does not feel safe (M2). Being at home is, therefore, not enough to experience resonance, one also needs the relevant knowledge and the right mental state to connect and immerse with nature. Plugging into the specific natural environment via cultural identification is the path to resonance. Staying unplugged without connecting to their heritage renders those experiences unavailable to the individual.

The heuristic model is based on a dualistic relation between resonance and alienation: either you know where you come from or you do not. The importance of learning about Māori culture suggests that the interplay of resonance and alienation is based on an asymmetrically nested structure. People with Māori heritage can be considered to be on different learning paths (see all informants) that allow them to resonate with nature to a different degree. This is an important insight, because it may alleviate or exacerbate the consequences of identity loss at the group level.

Intercultural similarities and differences

The socio-cultural background led to fundamental ontological differences. For Bodensee culture, nature is outside of the self and has to be actively approached (i.e., self ≥world). The relation to nature is based on one’s personal preferences, depending on what one wants to get from being in nature. It is purpose driven and about “how” and with “what” the individual enters tangible nature, aiming to change one’s individual emotional state. Although how someone approaches nature is highly individual, the outcome is a common experience.

Asking about feelings and emotions was not even necessary in the interview process with Māori informants because they immediately emphasized the emotional dimension of their nature relation (i.e., world => self). Their connection with nature on a spiritual and trans-generational level is existential. It is important, therefore, to understand “why” the relation to nature provides guidance and is a part of oneself. For Māori, engaging with nature is a collective, cultural practice, that is strongly subjected to codes of conduct. Through culturally shared elements the individual can identify with nature and develops an intimate relation to it.

Although the relation to nature for Bodensee culture works from the individual approach to the cultural experience, Māori culture derives meaning from the culture, and experiences nature on a highly individual level. Narratives are the medium through which they communicate cultural knowledge, and the stories are ripe with accounts of mystical phenomena as well as personifications of natural elements. Bodensee informants’ accounts were strongly fact based and anchored in personal experiences of events that actually happened.

For Māori, being safe is achieved through a mental state, not through controlling nature. When knowing nature, one can anticipate and predict nature’s behavior. In contrast, for people from Bodensee, being safe depends on human-made shelter, being in a safe place, and not being exposed to extreme weather events.

Both intra-cultural analyses of the relation between resonance and alienation revealed that people from Bodensee are driven by alienation aversion and resonance inclination, striving for relaxation and avoiding tension. The dialectic between resonance and alienation is dynamic and in constant tension, characterizable as a short-term interplay. The cultural framework suggests a short time horizon, in which the relation to nature depends on the individual (i.e., resonance expectations) and the situational circumstances of the moment (i.e., natural nature).

This is not the case for Māori culture in which the effect of alienation is not a driving force, but considered to be a rather constant reference point of their cultural past. A dualism between alienation and resonance developed through their colonial history. When crossing the line from not knowing where you come from to being connected to your identity, a resonating relation to nature is established and accessible through cultural practice. In Māori culture, references to genealogy include ancestors and future generations. Past, present, and future are part of Māoris’ sense making and thus also of how they approach nature.

Despite ample indications of cultural differences, informants from both groups associate “Big City Life” with mental fatigue and hampering the connection to one’s land. The same applies for the daily life, which impedes relaxation in nature.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Our study is one of the first to compare culture-bound mental representations of human–nature connectedness in two different cultures. Whereas Bodensee and Māori informants both appreciate nature, they fundamentally differ with regard to “how” they conceptualize nature and “which” nature relations they share within their culture.

Cultural consensus analysis allowed us to uncover similarities and differences in the nature-related knowledge structures of the two cultures. Whereas this approach yielded more refined insight into the mental representation of human–nature relations, our findings also are in line with insights from recent survey studies in both cultures. For example, a German study among 3,000 students found a growing alienation from nature among youth, indicating that many children lacked a basic connection to the natural environment, with nature becoming an increasingly abstract concept for them (Bucht et al. 2024). And a survey of 110 individuals with Māori heritage between 46–55 yr found that those with a strong cultural identity exhibited a greater positive regard for the environment, emphasizing the intrinsic link between cultural practices and environmental stewardship (Tassell-Matamua et al. 2021). More generally, our study echoes Mewes and colleagues’ (2024) recent call for a more fine-grained approach to environmental attitudes, one that is able to capture local and intra-cultural variation. Exploring regional differences in climate change opinions across 4,667 German municipalities, they found that local geographies—in particular the divide between urban vs. rural and prospering vs. declining areas—but also more complex historical and cultural differences between places have a major impact on environmental attitudes.

Before addressing the theoretical and policy implications of our explorative study, we would first like to acknowledge some of its limitations.

Limitations

First, our study is based on a small sample recruited through snowball sampling. Although we identified key intercultural differences, a larger, more systematically selected sample is needed to substantiate our findings.

Second, interviews were conducted via videoconferencing without follow-up. Although efficient, this may have limited the depth of conversations. Given the importance of place in understanding human–nature connectedness, in situ ethnographic research would have enriched our insights.

Third, we propose that the lack of progress in sustainability transitions stems from a deeper crisis of relatedness. Although our findings provide a theoretical perspective, they do not allow empirical conclusions about whether improving resonance experiences would enhance sustainability efforts.

Finally, researcher positionality also influenced the study. The interviewer’s familiarity with Bodensee culture may have led to shorter, less detailed responses, whereas Māori informants provided more context due to the interviewer’s lack of cultural knowledge. This contrast highlights both limitations and opportunities for future cross-cultural research. Notably, Māori informants’ emotional references to colonial history emerged spontaneously, demonstrating the potential for open-ended questions to reveal insights that structured approaches might miss. Conscious reflection on positionality can benefit future studies.

Theoretical Implications

Our findings are in line with resonance theory’s general claim of a crisis of relatedness. They complement previous insights on the growing disconnection from nature in the context of colonial domination (Plumwood 1993), the industrial revolution with the promise of progress (Keniger et al. 2013) and alienation from food resources (Atran and Medin 2008). Against many romanticized pictures of indigenous cultures living closely connected or “in harmony” (United Nations n.d.) with nature, we could show that human–nature disconnectedness is not solely a W.E.I.R.D-phenomenon, but that both cultures are in a fundamental crisis of relatedness with nature.

Complementing resonance theory with cultural consensus modeling and conceptualizing different aspects of HNC as separate knowledge domains we found that nature itself rarely causes alienation. Rather, other spheres of life carry that potential, such as work, daily life, city. Nature, however, provides opportunities to withdraw from such alienation-triggering environments.

The behavior of Bodensee informants reflects Rosa’s claim that resonance is built upon the pain of alienation: escaping situationally from daily life to experience relaxation in “natural nature.” In contrast, on first sight, alienation seems not to be a salient driver of resonance experiences of Māori informants, thereby disproving resonance theory’s proposition that alienation is a required precondition for a resonating relationship. However, this interpretation overlooks that experiences of resonance and alienation may have two different (although not mutually exclusive) roots: they may be evoked by a specific situation, and they may be structurally ingrained in a culture’s historical experiences. In the case of the Māori, colonial domination not only has deliberately destroyed their culturally grounded connections to nature, but has also imposed a way of Western urbanized life that is at odds with their previous way of life. As such, alienation has become a (long-lasting) daily reality for people with Māori heritage living in New Zealand. As a result, alienation may indeed also be a relevant precondition for resonance experiences of people with Māori heritage. Future applications of resonance theory might benefit from the distinction between situational and structural forms of alienation.

Policy Implications

We argue that interventions to mitigate the climate crisis and foster pro-environmental behavior will improve if they target the underlying culturally contingent crisis of relatedness, rather than attempting to change individual opinions and attitudes. Tailoring sustainability policy making to cultural knowledge systems requires gathering more insights into the difference between the fast-switching (situational) and long-lasting (structural) experiences of alienation and resonance with nature. The Māori case illustrates how indigenous lives may be bound by structurally ingrained and constantly present alienation, caused by their colonial past, whereas situational fluctuations of these experiences may be more characteristic for Western cultures. Hence, sustainability interventions may be more effective if they acknowledge that resonance and alienation are contingent upon cultural history and may have different sources in western and indigenous cultures.

Although many current interventions to enhance pro-environmental behavior rely on economic incentives (Byerly et al. 2018) or general moral appeals to strengthen environmental values (Steg et al. 2014a, b), our findings point to non-hierarchical human–nature relationships as a potential lever for a successful sustainability transition (Abson et al. 2017). It may be tempting to conclude that all that is needed is a collective mind-shift, especially in Western societies, toward approaching nature as a subject with rights and dignity. But our results suggest differently (e.g., Artmann 2023): western ontologies separate humans and nature, locating the self outside the natural world. The relation to nature is motivated by individual leisure experiences and immediate stress relief. Thus, demands for a cultural mind-shift in which humans and nature become one, would be in vain. Interventions that address the climate crisis in western societies might be more successful by emphasizing that pro-environmental behavior is important for a positive individual experience in nature. In the case of Bodensee, it would acknowledge the high degree of consensus in the knowledge domain of self => world relations: being able to relax in nature in the future requires a shared (local) strategy that protects nature as a space for individual joy. In contrast, policies prescribing how citizens ought to behave in nature might have detrimental effects, causing rejection and mistrust.

Conversely, being stripped of their cultural identity by colonialism, Māori lost their collective cultural base for relating to nature, thereby disrupting their shared conceptualization of world => self relations. Engaging in a responsive, resonating relation with nature is about remembering one’s cultural roots and being able to attach cultural meaning to nature. Thus, our results suggest that to foster a sustainability transition in indigenous societies, teaching others about the cultural heritage and to speak the native language is essential to temper shared feelings of alienation. Remembering the colonial history could be a key lever to foster resonance experiences and the willingness to protect nature. Emphasizing nature’s relaxing qualities instead is unlikely to increase pro-environmental behavior in Māori culture.

Our comparative study of two ideal typical cases highlights the strong imprint of historical experiences and cultural differences on HNC. Nevertheless, there is a growing awareness among policy makers all over the world that the sustainability transition requires a fundamental transformation of how our societies relate to nature, and that this transformation needs an institutional safeguard to be effective. Seen in the light of our findings it may, therefore, not come as a surprise that one of the most far-reaching legal redefinitions of the human–nature relationship was launched in New Zealand. After a protracted negotiation with Māori representatives, in 2017, New Zealand’s parliament was the first country to grant rights to the Whanganui River and its surrounding forest as an independent legal entity (Gross 2021). A recently published documentary “I am the River, the River is me” could show how becoming a legal person helping his ecosystem to recover (Lom 2024). Even though it is still too early to assess the effectiveness of such “Rights of Nature” interventions, the fact that many countries are exploring the options for implementing similar legislation suggests that policy makers are acknowledging that the climate crisis is also a crisis of relatedness and should be treated as such.

__________

^[1] Research uses “cultural consensus model” and “collective mental model” interchangeably, all referring to shared knowledge that is part of a collective belief system.
^[2] Words in italics refer to central concepts or later on concepts mentioned by informants.
^[3] As it is common in assessments of conventional statistical power, sample size estimates for cultural consensus models also depend on the desired or obtained effect sizes (Romney et al. 1986:327). Cultural consensus modeling can, in principle, be carried out with sample sizes as low as n = 4 informants—for example, accepting 80% of items being classified correctly at a competence level of 0.8 and a confidence level of 0.99 (Weller 2007:355).
^[4] Prof. Hugh Campell, University of Otago, personal communication, 19 December 2024.
^[5] “Common Truth” is the concept that the consensus analysis literature uses to refer to the model assumption that there is one and only one “right” answer for every question (Borgatti 1997). The point of cultural consensus analysis is to assess a previously unknown answer: to arrive at a cultural “commonly shared” truth.
^[6] Competence scores and answer keys can be found in Appends. 4 and 5.

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