Protected areas are increasingly expected to justify their existence in terms of their importance to society. However, this importance, and the complex ways in which people relate to protected areas, cannot be captured by instrumental and intrinsic value framings alone. Rather, our understanding of the role of protected areas in society needs to take account of people’s relational values about nature. Here we review the literature on values associated with human-nature connection and related concepts to highlight which approaches are currently being used to understand expressions of relational values in empirical protected area research. Our results highlights seven ‘application domains’ for relational values research, highlighting expressions of relational values, and the stakeholder focus of each. Place-focused and psychological theories were most common across these domains. This work represents a first step in developing the foundations of a relational value research agenda in protected areas.

人们越来越期望保护区就其对社会的重要性来证明其存在的正当性。但是，这种重要性以及人们与保护区相关的复杂方式无法仅通过工具性和内在价值框架来体现。相反，我们对保护区在社会中的作用的理解需要考虑人们关于自然的关系价值。在这里，我们回顾了有关与人与自然的联系以及相关概念的价值的文献，以突出指出当前在经验保护区研究中使用了哪些方法来理解关系价值的表达。我们的结果突出显示了用于关系价值观研究的七个“应用领域”，突出了关系价值观的表达方式，以及每个领域的利益相关者关注点。在这些领域中，以地点为中心的心理理论最为普遍。这项工作是发展保护区相关价值研究议程基础的第一步。