Gratitude Letters to Natural Places Promote Ecospirituality via Increased Anthropomorphism

Gratitude to nature promotes sustainability and is linked to both anthropomorphism of nature and ecospirituality. Thus, these factors may mediate the effects of nature gratitude on pro-environmental behavioral intentions. The effects of nature gratitude may also be strongest when nature is explicitly anthropomorphized or when people consider a natural place of personal importance. Therefore, this study examined the effect of writing gratitude letters to Mother Nature and natural places on pro-environmental intentions, anthropomorphism, and ecospirituality. We hypothesized that participants randomly assigned to write gratitude letters to Mother Nature, in contrast to participants who write gratitude letters to a natural place or write about their morning routine (control condition), will express increased pro-environmental intent due to increased anthropomorphism and ecospirituality. In addition, we hypothesized that writing gratitude letters to a natural place would lead to more pro-environmental outcomes compared with the control condition. Writing gratitude letters to Mother Nature led to greater ecospirituality compared with a control letter (although not compared with the natural place letter, contrary to our hypotheses). Writing gratitude letters to a natural place led to both greater ecospirituality and anthropomorphism compared with a control letter. There was no overall effect of experimental condition on pro-environmental intentions and mixed evidence for an indirect effect of the natural place letter via anthropomorphism and ecospirituality. Path analyses supported that nature gratitude serially affects ecospirituality by first increasing anthropomorphism. Future research should continue to investigate how emotions such as gratitude can be leveraged to motivate action that protects our planet. Key Words: Gratitude—Mother Nature—Pro-environmental intent—Anthropomorphism—Ecospirituality