EcoTypes FAQ

There may be practical reasons to consider the EcoTypes possibility, beyond simple disagreement or agreement, that engagement across difference may lead to fuller environmental solutions. Many good initiatives today address our divided world, yet often assume we need to reach consensus or compromise. While disagreement can impede environmental progress, reaching agreement may be impossible: just think of controversies around climate change, biodiversity conservation, or environmental justice. Disagreement can be a problem, but agreement can be elusive.

Yet a fuller account for why EcoTypes supports engagement across difference arises from its underlying relational theory. Relational theories of knowledge stress interaction between diverse people and their world, such that differing ideas are inevitable, and fuller truths can be built upon them. These relational truths arise from the interaction of knowing subjects—people from different parts of the world or with differing life experience and expertise—with objects of knowledge such as climate change or environmental injustice. These truths are thus neither “objective” (entirely independent of knowing subjects) nor “subjective” (entirely made up by these subjects); they express a tension, a sort of dance, between the two.

Relational theory can get abstract; one concrete example arises from complementarity in physics. You may know that light appears both as waves and as particles, but not at the same time. The early 20th century physicist Niels Bohr argued that this is because we cannot know light without measuring (i.e., interacting with) it; depending on our measurement apparatus, the truth about light takes differing forms. Following Bohr’s complementarity, then, two opposing descriptions of reality may each be true, yet a fuller truth arises from considering them both. Bohr generalized complementarity via a famous quote often attributed to him: that the opposite of a truth is a falsehood, but the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth—broadly known as paradox. The relational truths of complementarity, then, are paradoxical truths, contradictions that are nonetheless true. Can you imagine examples of paradox in your own life, or in our world?: there are actually many if you stop and think for a moment.

Relationality and complementarity may help you better understand the EcoTypes survey and your complementary EcoType. As introduced below, EcoTypes are statistically derived from themes, representing our biggest differences, so complementary EcoTypes are less like puzzle pieces that neatly fit alongside ours, and more like contradictory truths that challenge ours. What you might learn from your complementary EcoType, then, may lead you to re-examine yours in important ways; engagement across these differences may be more of a creative tension than a peaceful harmony—a tricky, but eventually successful, dance where you both learn moves from your partner.  

Relational theory can also help you appreciate why you encounter binary opposition in EcoTypes, with axis building blocks defined by oppositional poles, and statistically derived themes via opposing attractors. Binary opposition was understood by structuralists as a basic element of human meaning, though post-structuralists rightly derided binaries as far more power-laden and less universal than structuralists believed. Aren’t EcoTypes binaries—say, the theme attractors of nonhuman vs. human Place—similarly problematic? They would be if we understood them in an essentialist manner, and not via relational theory.

Essentialism is generally a term of critique in theory, implying a belief that concepts are fixed, universal and eternal. But if, like light as waves vs. particles, these concepts are simply a result of our differentiated interactions with reality, there is a deeper, paradoxical truth beneath them we must strive to appreciate to fully honor difference.

This is why EcoTypes theme poles are called attractors. Axis poles simplify conceptual difference, e.g., between incremental and radical Change or heterodox and orthodox Science. They are a point of departure to explore difference. But theme attractors represent something more elusive: as with mathematical attractors, they appear as points in the middle of a great deal of motion, but they do not literally attract motion like a magnet; they are not real in an essentialist manner. The factor analysis technique used to identify theme attractors seeks common statistical difference among thousands of EcoTypes survey participants; attractors thus point to a collective creative tension we can honor as paradox.

If, following the EcoTypes survey, you complete the followup MCJD (“Many Care, Just Differently”) form, you will consider four ways of “counting” or navigating difference. We commonly encounter difference in binary form—say, environmental insights derived from science vs. spirituality. Think of this as counting to two. One response might be to deny that their insights are substantively different, or to work toward agreement—to count to one—which is often well intentioned, but may flatten their important truths, and faces the challenges noted above. Another might be to rightly decry binary terms like “science” and “spirituality” as simplistic in the face of multiple perspectives, life experiences, and power imbalances—to count beyond two, much in the manner of post-structuralism. 

Both counting to one and counting beyond two are understandable, and to some extent valid, responses to counting to two. But, similar to the novel possibility beyond simple agreement or disagreement noted above, EcoTypes builds on relational theory to suggest a novel way of counting beneath two. Counting beneath two means that, when we encounter contradictions in environmental ideas—say, between the theme attractors of old vs. new Knowledge, resonating in part with spirituality and science—we can seek opportunities to discover deeper, often paradoxical truths, preserving the important differences implied in these contradictions while bringing them together into creative tension. 

Counting to one, and counting beyond two, seem like more peaceful solutions than counting beneath two: we all are one! or, we all have our own valid perspectives! But, perhaps in part to avoid the cognitive/affective dissonance of counting to two, they lose the possibility of creative tension: of sitting alongside difference, no matter how uncomfortable, until we start to discover deeper, dynamic truths together. 

Counting beneath two starts, but never stops, with binary opposition—this would be the error of essentialism noted above. Counting beneath two is a skill, derived from relational theory, you can cultivate, to navigate a world of environmental difference in a fuller way than counting to one, two, or beyond two. EcoTypes proceeds from the reality of difference, disagreement, and conflict in our world, to help you name and appreciate some important differences in environmental ideas—the EcoTypes axes and derived themes—and to navigate those differences, such as your EcoType and complementary EcoType, in a manner that may never be easy, but may be the best way we we can work with difference toward creative environmental solutions.

Methodologically, EcoTypes offers a typology of environmental ideas, but there have been others. Perhaps the most widely adopted is the New Ecological Paradigm or NEP, introduced in the latter 1970s and still broadly used today. The NEP is a two-box typology, consolidating five supposedly pro-environmental ideas (e.g., belief in an inherent balance of nature) in contrast to anti-environmental ideas, summarized as the Dominant Social Paradigm. The NEP’s decided normativity (as superior to the DSP) and inability to differentiate multiple types of environmentalism stand in stark contrast to EcoTypes.

Other typological approaches address environmentalism in the plural, though most are a priori classifications not based on empirical data. One simple scheme presents a spectrum of environmentalism including “brown,” “light green,” and “dark green” alternatives, to which “bright green” is sometimes added; this “shades of green” approach is intuitive and widespread. Another approach is to posit two key dimensions, thus four resultant sectors or types: one example includes “prosaic vs. imaginative” and “reformist vs. radical” axes; another arrives at four “myths of nature” based on the grid (vertical differentiation) and group (social cohesion) axes of cultural theory; and yet another considers over two hundred environmental ideas, gathering them all via a two-dimensional “integral theory” typology based on exterior vs. interior, and collective vs. individual, experience. All such intuitive approaches may offer insights into the EcoType possibility that “many care, just differently,” but lack any substantiating data.

Then there are the data-rich, statistical approaches to environmental typologies, generally derived from surveys as in EcoTypes. Some use clustering techniques to identify multiple types, as in this study of Americans suggesting nine varieties including “liberal greens,” “religious greens,” “outdoor browns,” and “conservative browns”—differentiated, but unfortunately implying a simple, unidimensional green-to-brown spectrum akin to the NEP or shades of green typologies. Many approach environmental ideas using psychological terminology such as attitudes or values, deploying statistically sophisticated methods but often arriving at one overarching environmental disposition, usually termed pro-environmental, connecting diverse dimensions. Why do most data-rich approaches arrive at such simplistic conclusions? It could be that their survey items are limited to those already deemed “environmental.”  Additionally, for any survey-based approach, their statistical conclusions only apply at best to the population surveyed, which in many (but not all) cases lacks diversity along cross-national or other lines.

Though this FAQ focuses on method, conceptual issues of theory arise here as well. In particular: what are these “types” comprising environmental typologies? Statistical typologies often invoke individualistic terms such as attitudes, while others deploy collective notions like worldviews. On this website, EcoTypes are generally defined as environmental frameworks; but what is a framework? The forthcoming EcoTypes book offers greater context on frameworks, approaching them as ideologically-informed imaginaries, as the ways we each make meaning of our life experiences. Alongside the EcoTypes survey has been an ongoing set of qualitative interviews designed to explore EcoTypes imaginaries among participants, and thus ground EcoTypes typologies in people’s lives. 

How does EcoTypes compare with the above approaches? Here are some key differences.

• As an educational initiative, EcoTypes deploys a survey so that participants can, upon completion, receive a customized report. Self-identification via surveys is popular, as evidenced for example in personality tests ranging from Myers-Briggs to the Enneagram. This educational objective shapes the EcoTypes methodology. As one example, EcoTypes once included as many as 18 fundamental ideas (axes), but this number proved unwieldy in the classroom, so now it includes the top four related to each EcoTypes theme, or 12 total. As another, participant theme scores, and derivative EcoTypes, were once derived via weighted axis variables and the normalization techniques common to factor analysis, yet resulting in an outcome participants could not calculate themselves, and applicable only to those participating in the survey vs. a broader potential population of difference. So, theme scores now are a simple unweighted mean of axis scores. This simpler approach often results in the same EcoType for participants, with a high correlation between the two (exceeding 0.9). 
• As an inductive approach, EcoTypes proceeds with a much broader set of fundamental ideas than any other environmental survey, so as to discover patterns of difference beyond simple “pro-” vs. “anti-” environmental inclinations. Thus, in addition to typical axes such as Ethics or Nature, EcoTypes includes Aesthetics, Change, Science, Time, and other considerations rarely included elsewhere. Each is given environmental relevance via its survey statements—e.g., for Aesthetics, one statement is “When it comes to beauty, it is hard for people to improve upon wild nature”—but it is quite possible that EcoTypes differ from other common environmental typologies due to this much broader circle of ideas. One may object that these are not all “environmental” ideas, but this assumes a restricted, arguably ethnocentric notion of environment. Certainly the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, included in EcoTypes, suggest a similarly broad approach to environment.
• Given its emphasis on difference, EcoTypes deploys statistical techniques to analyze this broad set of fundamental ideas for fundamental differences among respondents, in contrast to more common approaches looking for clusters of similarity. The main statistical technique EcoType uses for this is factor analysis, which has a checkered history but is commonly used today. It is factor analysis of the diverse set of EcoTypes axes, seeking greatest common variance in an orthogonal manner, that has resulted in the three broadly independent themes of Place, Knowledge, and Action, which express common differences via their opposing attractors. As noted above, factor analysis results do not directly determine a participant’s theme scores for educational reasons, but factor analysis is performed regularly on EcoTypes data to see whether the twelve axes continue to reduce to the three themes, and whether each continues to associate with the same theme. Since EcoTypes was launched in 2017, these themes, or factor-analyzed differences, have been consistent from year to year—but please read the theory FAQ above for a caution that we should not interpret them as fixed and eternal.  

As with all approaches, EcoTypes is not totally comprehensive nor perfect. Considering the three qualities above: 

• Given its educational intent, EcoTypes has to date generally been deployed among college undergraduate students enrolled in environmental courses—by no means representative of everyone! Yet the EcoTypes themes, and resultant EcoTypes, stretch far beyond this population, and educational resources such as these examples help participants imagine “many care, just differently” beyond those who might be in their classroom. We also trust that the methodological revisions noted above make it easier for students and instructors to derive educational benefit from EcoTypes. 
• The EcoTypes inductive net of fundamental ideas is broad—much broader than comparable surveys—but not infinite. There might be other EcoTypes axes—and indeed, as mentioned above, there have been. Would additional axes result in more, or different, underlying EcoTypes themes, and thus EcoTypes? All EcoTypes axes included in the survey since 2017 have not affected its underlying theme structure, but this is a possibility. In fact, a good learning exercise might be to imagine a new EcoTypes axis, and to consider whether it might resonate with one of the three established themes, or suggest an entirely new one.
• To explore difference, the fundamental EcoTypes ideas (axes) are defined oppositionally via poles, with downstream implications for themes and EcoTypes. This approach aids the survey with simple, unidimensional scoring of axes and themes, but may strike the participant as simplistic or flawed. In addition to its practical advantages, this approach is closely allied to EcoTypes theory; if you are interested, a much fuller account of why EcoTypes initially adopts this oppositional approach is provided in “What is the theory underlying EcoTypes?” above.