In the face of global climate change, investigating pro-environmental behaviors and perceptions of the human-nature relationship is increasingly important. We investigated perceived asymmetries in how humans and nature impact each other across two studies. Participants (N=331) rated the degree to which they believe humans and nature impact each other (Study 1) and were asked to list and assess instances of human-nature and nature-human impact (Study 2). Study 1 results suggest that participants generally perceive humans to have a stronger impact on nature than vice versa, whereas Study 2 results suggest that participants perceive humans to have a strong-negative and a weak-positive impact on nature and nature to have a similarly strong-positive and weak-negative impact on humans. These findings suggest that while humans’ relationship with nature is broadly perceived anthropocentrically and unidirectionally, when probed about specific human-nature impacts, the human-nature relationship is perceived as bidirectional, but still unbalanced.

This study examines how mental models of the Human-Nature Relationship (HNR) predict pro-environmental behavioral intentions directly and mediated through anthropocentric and biocentric environmental attitudes. We found that behavioral intentions relevant to environmental protection were directly predicted by two aspects of HNR: human superiority beliefs (negatively) and perceived human impact on nature (positively). Protection intentions were also indirectly predicted by these variables, as well as perceived impact of nature on humans (positively) via their association with biocentric attitudes (SRMR= 0.040). In contrast, no component of HNR directly predicted behavioral intentions relevant to environmental investment, although all three showed the same pattern of indirect association via biocentric attitudes (SRMR= 0.036). Results suggest that mental models of the human-nature relationship provide a cognitive foundation for environmental behavioral intentions both directly and through their association with environmental attitudes. These findings have implications for pro-environmental interventions that deal with conceptual and attitudinal change.