EcoTypes: Exploring Environmental Ideas

What is your EcoType?

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EcoTypes

Earth Justice | Ecoscience | Ecospirituality
SCIENCE POLICY | Small Green Steps
Comparison | Going Deeper

EcoTypes are patterns in theme scores—Place, Knowledge, and Action—among those who completed the survey. There are five common EcoTypes: in alphabetical order they include Earth Justice, Ecoscience, Ecospirituality, Science Policy, and Small Green Steps.  You can think of EcoTypes as frameworks: structured approaches to issues of environment that inform how we understand, care, and act regarding them.

Each is defined by particular poles of two themes: for instance, Earth Justice represents a patterns in respondents who strongly support nonhuman Place and big Action. For each, there was less of a statistical pattern for the third theme. This suggests that differing EcoTypes represent differing emphases, both in terms of themes and theme poles.

EcoTypes were initially determined by k-means cluster analysis of the theme scores of several thousand respondents between 2019-21. You can view a dynamic graph of these 2500+ data points and the five initial EcoTypes—which sound similar to, but not exactly like, those above.

Since then, related EcoTypes have emerged from more recent surveys, resulting in the five you see here. There may be many EcoTypes out there—many ways people approach environmental issues. These five represent the most common we’ve found among those who have completed the EcoTypes survey, but yours may be different!…take the survey and you will find out.

Below you will find a summary of each common EcoType framework, then a comparison of their Place, Knowledge, and/or Action characteristics.

Earth Justice

  • Proportion: 35.1%
  • Place: Nonhuman
  • Knowledge: N/A
  • Action: Big
Fighting the oppression of nature

Earth Justice (35% of survey respondents) strongly embraces nonhuman Place, with an equally strong emphasis on big Action; both are the highest among all EcoTypes. Earth Justice advocates structural transformation to save an imperiled planet. Earth Justice has no decided preference regarding Knowledge.

Ecoscience

  • Proportion: 11.7%
  • Place: Nonhuman
  • Knowledge: New
  • Action: N/A
Saving nature by following the facts

Ecoscience (12% of survey respondents) joins the Earth Justice emphasis on nonhuman Place with a strong endorsement of new Knowledge. Here, for example, might be those who support conservation biology and other scientific approaches to preserve nonhuman species. Ecoscience is less distinctive in terms of its Action preference, in contrast to Earth Justice.

Ecospirituality

  • Proportion: 22.8%
  • Place: Nonhuman
  • Knowledge: Old
  • Action: N/A
Honoring the sacredness of nature

Ecospirituality (23% of survey respondents) includes a preference for nonhuman Place similar to Ecoscience, but strongly favors old Knowledge emanating, for example, from spiritual and wisdom traditions, rather than new Knowledge, and in this regard differs from Ecoscience. Like Ecoscience, Ecospirituality does not have a clear Action preference.

Science Policy

  • Proportion: 15.8%
  • Place: N/A
  • Knowledge: New
  • Action: Big
Implementing fact-based solutions

Science Policy (16% of survey respondents) is less distinctive in its Place preference, in contrast to all other major EcoTypes. What distinguishes Science Policy is a strong emphasis on new Knowledge, similar to Ecoscience, and big Action, similar to Earth Justice—though possibly expressed in less radical tones. Here, for example, might be those who advocate global treaties based on climate science.

Small Green Steps

  • Proportion: 14.5%
  • Place: Nonhuman
  • Knowledge: N/A
  • Action: Small
Saving our planet, little by little

Small Green Steps (14% of survey respondents) favors nonhuman Place similar to several other common EcoTypes, but is unique in strongly favoring small Action. Small Green Steps distrusts large-scale solutions as ineffective, preferring incremental, individual-based approaches. Small Green Steps does not include a particular Knowledge preference.

Five EcoTypes Compared

EcoTypes occupy distinctive locations in a three-dimensional space defined by Place, Knowledge, and Action theme poles. Below is a table summarizing the Place, Knowledge, and Action theme scores of recent survey respondents assigned these EcoTypes, with distinctive features highlighted; negative scores tend toward the left theme pole and vice versa. The mean overall score for each theme is at bottom for comparison.

EcoTypePlaceKnowledgeAction
Earth Justice (35.1%)-0.35-0.07+0.43
Ecoscience (11.7%)-0.30+0.26+0.01
Ecospirituality (22.8%)-0.31-0.31+0.04
Science Policy (15.8%)+0.01+0.33+0.37
Small Green Steps (14.5%)-0.19-0.03-0.26
All Respondents-0.25-0.02+0.18
Averages above from spring 2022 EcoTypes survey data (n = 956). Negative numbers indicate tendency toward the left theme pole, and positive numbers toward the right theme pole. Theme range similar to axis range of -1 to +1.

Going Deeper

Going Deeper With EcoTypes

You learned above that EcoTypes are based on particular combinations of Place, Knowledge, and/or Action. But this suggests what is absent (both themes and theme poles) in each EcoType.

Choose one EcoType above, and offer a critique based on its absences: the themes or theme poles it does not include.

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