EcoTypes 2024-25

Overview | EcoTypes | 2023-24 DATA | COMPLEMENTARITY

Overview

What is your EcoType?

Your EcoType is your environmental framework: your broad approach to environmental issues. Just like builders construct a house starting with its frame, you build your environmental knowledge, concern, and action upon a framework—your EcoType.

Different people have different environmental frameworks—differing ways they approach environmental issues. EcoTypes gives you a systematic way to think about these different frameworks, so you can understand your approach better, and you can engage in fuller, richer conversation across difference.

The EcoTypes you are assigned from the survey have gone through several changes over time. EcoTypes have always been derived from your Place, Knowledge, and Action theme scores, which themselves are derived from your twelve axis scores. Your EcoType thus summarizes all of these scores in a concise way. As of 2024-25, your EcoType includes a phrase summarizing your Place and Action scores, and a suffix summarizing your Knowledge scores; here is a background and rationale.

EcoTypes are, in effect, our differing answers to the key theme questions:

• (Place) What is the place of nonhumans and humans on Earth?
• (Action) What action at small and big scales will help us build this place?
• (Knowledge) What old and new ways of knowing will help us build this place?

Here is a sample EcoType you might receive on your EcoTypes survey report, including an EcoTypes Place/Action phrase and Knowledge suffix.

This sample EcoType above would be assigned to those whose survey responses to the twelve EcoTypes axes tended toward human Place, small Action, and old Knowledge. More information on what this all means is below!

EcoTypes around the world

What might be the environmental frameworks of people around the world? Some have claimed to answer this huge question, using surveys or religious texts, but the aim of EcoTypes is more humble: to explore patterns of Place, Knowledge, and Action among many different kinds of people. It is possible that many care, just differently. We approach environmental frameworks—Ecotypes—of many people from the same non-judgmental perspective.

This global approach to EcoTypes is guided by major cross-national studies of values, including the World Values Survey and the Schwartz values research program. Both of these studies suggest two fundamental dimensions of values, such as the World Values Survey dimensions visualized on the cross-cultural diagram at right. These fundamental dimensions are similar to the three EcoTypes themes in summarizing a much greater array of difference.

Four EcoTypes

Small Green Steps | Earth Action | Social Justice | Land Stewardship | (O) / (I) / (N)

Your EcoTypes phrase and suffix

The Place and Action characteristics of the four EcoTypes phrases are summarized in the table below.

EcoTypes Phrase	Place	Action
Small Green Steps	Nonhuman	Small
Earth Action	Nonhuman	Big
Social Justice	Human	Big
Land Stewardship	Human	Small

Another way to compare the Place and Action characteristics of the four EcoTypes phrases is how they might respond to the respective questions pertaining to those two themes: “What is the place of nonhumans and humans on Earth?” and “What action at small and big scales will help us build this place?” Simple answers are on the table below.

EcoTypes Phrase	Place/Action Answers
Small Green Steps	Let’s do the little things we can to care for all life on Earth.
Earth Action	We must dismantle global systems that threaten all life on Earth.
Social Justice	Let us fight structures of oppression that harm marginalized people.
Land Stewardship	We can each care for natural resources to benefit everyone.

The three possible Knowledge suffixes are (O) for old Knowledge, (N) for new Knowledge, and (I) for integral Knowledge, representing both old and new Knowledge as summarized below.

Do remember: in the spirit of “Many Care, Just Differently,” there is nothing inherently better or worse about any of the four EcoTypes Place-Action phrases, or the three Knowledge subtypes. They are just different ways of addressing the key Place, Knowledge, and Action questions above. If you wish to better understand your own EcoType, or have a conversation with someone with a differing EcoType, do keep this in mind, at least as a good point of departure.

Below is an overview of the four Place/Action EcoTypes phrases and Knowledge subtypes. As another resource for each, feel free to have a look at the EcoTypes personae, including an idealized person representing each EcoType and the two contrasting (O) and (N) Knowledge subtype attractors.

Small Green Steps

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Earth Action

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Social Justice

If your EcoType were Social Justice, you may offer this answer to the first two questions above:

Let us fight structures of oppression that harm marginalized people.

And a Sustainable Development Goal you may find important as a global priority might be Reduced Inequalities.

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Would you like to meet Isabella and Joaquin, the two Social Justice personae?

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In comparison to other EcoTypes, Social Justice primarily embraces human Place and big Action; this EcoType is thus in the upper right sector below. Its complementary EcoType is Small Green Steps.

Human Place and big Action are idealized theme attractors, each summarizing four statistically related EcoTypes axis poles. Feel free to study these poles via the axis links below: if you are Social Justice, which represent you?

Human Place	Big Action
Crafted Aesthetics	Radical Change
Dynamic Ecosystems	Planned Economies
Anthropocentric Ethics	Institutional Social Scale
Hybrid Nature	Conflict Society

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Land Stewardship

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Old/Integral/New Knowledge

These four EcoTypes offer various answers to the first two big questions above. But what about the third question?:

What old and new ways of knowing will help us build this place?

This is the question underlying the Knowledge theme, for which there are two attractors, old and new Knowledge. For these Knowledge subtypes, you would have an (O) or a (N) suffix appended to your EcoType, as summarized below.

(O)ld Knowledge	(N)ew Knowledge
Heterodox Science	Orthodox Science
Sacred Spirituality	Secular Spirituality
Phobic Technology	Philic Technology
Past Time	Future Time

Yet analysis of over 3000 responses in 2023-24 suggest a third Knowledge subtype, which we will call (I) for integral Knowledge, alongside the old and new Knowledge attractors. What is integral Knowledge? Some responses indeed embraced old or new Knowledge, as defined by their axis poles above; tet others seemed to embrace a different approach. Overall, looking at 2023-24 Knowledge axis responses, there seem to be two statistical clusters:

As the diagram suggests, all four are correlated and thus part of the common Knowledge theme, but Spirituality and Time, and Science and Technology, are more closely correlated. And fully three of five 2023-24 respondents, followed this pattern, scoring toward old Knowledge (–) on Spirituality and Time, and toward new Knowledge (+) on Science and Technology.

We might call this pattern “integral” vs. old or new Knowledge, following an integral ecology philosophy in which both religion and science—both old and new Knowledge—offer important environmental guidance. In many ways, the three Knowledge subtypes resonate with longstanding discussions and debates over the role of religion and spirituality (old) vs. science (new) in providing guidance to our lives. As noted above, none of these are inherently better or worse!; they are just different ways of addressing the big Knowledge theme question above.

2023-24 Data Patterns

How does your EcoType compare with others who have taken the survey? We can start to answer this question via analysis of 2023-24 survey responses (n > 3000). What you’ll see below are some interesting patterns in the overall proportion of the EcoTypes Place/Action phrase and Knowledge subtype, and the demographic characteristics of survey respondents for each.

Place/Action phrase

Here is a chart of the four EcoTypes phrases,. You can readily see that Earth Action and Small Green Steps, the two EcoTypes tending toward nonhuman Place, were far more prevalent among respondents (generally environmental college students). Yet even among these respondents, an important difference is evident in the key Action question noted above (see here for further details). And as we extend the EcoTypes survey to other communities in the spirit of “Many Care, Just Differently,” we can expect some to place greater emphasis on human Place.

Demographic patterns among these four main EcoType phrases offer interesting clues as to who might lean toward which and why. As with the above chart, variables with ANOVA significance at p = .001 are asterisked. We see in some cases (Location, Economic ID, Environmental Solutions) the differences are not great enough to be statistically significant, but in all others they are. The following are particularly noteworthy:

• Gender (cf. cross-national Gen Z data). Earth Action and Small Green Steps, both nonhuman Place EcoTypes, are more common among female/nonbinary respondents, while Land Stewardship is more common among those who identify as male, with Social Justice in between. Indeed, mean Place scores (-1 nonhuman to +1 human) for male are -0.16 vs. -0.24 for female/nonbinary (p < .001); though this difference seems small, remember that theme scores are averages of averages (see above), so there is an important difference between male and non-male gender identification in Place, and thus in Place-Action EcoTypes.
• Politics, Religion. Another highly significant difference involves respondent political identification, with Earth Action respondents far to the political left relative to others, and Land Stewardship slightly to the political right. This pattern is reproduced in religious identification as well, here focusing on those who called themselves “spiritual” vs. “religious,” with Earth Action respondents far more likely to call themselves spiritual than others, and Land Stewardship far more likely to call themselves religious. One intentional reason, in fact, for this EcoType name is that stewardship has a long theological tradition in land management, and thus can be expected to be somewhat associated with those who call themselves religious.
• Environmental self-IDs. Earth Action respondents are most comfortable calling themselves environmentalists, and worry the most about environmental problems, while Land Stewardship respondents are the least so for both, with Social Justice and Small Green Steps in between.

Knowledge suffix

A chart re-analyzing 2023-24 survey data according to the three Knowledge subtypes suggests the strength of integral Knowledge (I), a support for old Knowledge in the context of Spirituality and Time, and new Knowledge regarding Science and Technology. Other respondents, though, showed roughly equal support old or new Knowledge, as applied to all four Knowledge axes.

As noted above, this pattern of 2023-24 responses is what has resulted in a different way to characterize your Knowledge suffix vs. your Place/Action phrase: your phrase simply summarizes the Place and Action attractors to which your axis responses tended, but your suffix might be one of the two Knowledge attractors, or the integral Knowledge combination of the two.

The demographics of 2023-24 respondents can be compared via ANOVA with these three Knowledge types to yield interesting patterns as well, as shown on the figure at right. In this figure, all demographic variables significant at p = .001 are asterisked. In some cases (e.g., ethnicity) differences are relatively, minor, but in others they are larger, including:

• Gender [again!]—perhaps the biggest demographic difference. Those who identify as male lean much more toward new Knowledge, whereas those who identify as female or nonbinary (grouped given other similarities in EcoTypes data) lean much more toward old or integral Knowledge.
• Location. Though the majority of respondents reside in the US, others from non-US locations completed the survey too, and they tend to lean more toward new Knowledge than US respondents.
• Politics, Religion, Environmental self-IDs. Those who lean toward new Knowledge are unique among a number of other variables as well: they are less left-leaning politically, less likely to self-identify as “religious” or “spiritual,” and are less likely to identify as “environmentalist” or say they worry about environmental issues.

Complementarity

Your complementary EcoType is the environmental framework that differs from yours the most. It’s easy to identify your complementary EcoType: just go to your EcoTypes Place/Action chart and look for the sector opposite your dot. Complementary EcoTypes are also given for the four main EcoTypes phrases above. Then, for your complementary Knowledge suffix, you can switch (O) for (N) and vice versa; if yours is (I), feel free to choose one of the other Knowledge subtypes you feel might be different from yours.

Complementarity is a principle derived from physics, in which two opposing descriptions of reality are each true, yet a fuller truth arises from considering them both. The differences embedded in EcoTypes arise from our differing interactions with reality and can be a strength, if we are willing to engage with people whose EcoTypes differ from—indeed, may be the opposite of—ours.

If you’d like guidance on how to take some practical next steps with complementarity, see the Going Deeper page. The forthcoming EcoTypes book offers a much fuller treatment of complementarity.