For the love of the land: How emotions motivate volunteerism in ecological restoration

This article describes, analyzes and synthesizes the emotions expressed by volunteers in a community-based ecological restoration effort in the western United States. We present a qualitative case study, the Partners for Native Plants (PNP) project, with the hopes of better understanding what emotions, flanked by values, motivations and goals, lead to involvement in environmental initiatives. Emotions play a dual role as both the outcome of event appraisal, examining whether one has achieved or not achieved a desired state, and also to function as motivators to work toward goal achievement. We examined two broad categories of emotions expressed by PNP participants. We examined those expressed in response to or as a motivation for the achievement of desired nature-based goals (pleasure-related) as well as emotions that are expressed in response to avoiding an undesired outcome or as a motivation to avoid goal impairment (responsibility-related), namely environmental degradation. Behaviors to protect nature are not based solely on cognitive decisions, but are motivated by a wide variety of emotions including self-blame, indignation, and affinity to nature. This information may be useful in understanding how to appeal to emotions and engage urban people as volunteers in hands-on environmental restoration.