Are relational values different in practice to instrumental values?
Introduction
Valuation of nature has been based primarily on two main classes of values (Chan et al., 2016, Himes and Muraca, 2018). The first value class focuses on “instrumental values” which are the values of nature that are determined based on the services and benefits that nature can provide for human beings (Justus et al., 2009, Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2010). The second value class focuses on the values that nature has on its own, regardless of its use to humans. This is often referred to as “intrinsic value” (Lockwood 1999).
The dichotomy between the two values has been criticised to be constraining to people who may care for the environment differently and would take more action to protect the environment if environmental issues were framed in a different way (Chan et al. 2016). More importantly, the two values miss an essential component of decision-making by people. Decision-making often involves more than just considering the inherent worth of an entity (i.e. intrinsic value)— intrinsic value is also defined as the non-instrumental value of an object, i.e. the object has value on itself; value of an object by virtue of its intrinsic properties; and “objective value” of an object independent of the valuations of valuers (O’Neill 1992)—or the satisfaction brought by an entity (i.e. instrumental values), but also people’s relationship towards an entity and whether the relationship is important for achieving a meaningful life (Chan et al. 2016).
As a result, a third class of value has emerged in the value articulation for ecosystems. This third value class focuses on values associated with human-nature interactions as well as social interactions between humans which involve nature (Chan et al. 2016). These values are referred to as “relational values”. Unlike instrumental values, relational values are not directly present in an entity but are derived through people’s interaction, care and stewardship for the entity. Although here we use relational values in the sense of a third value category that breaks the dichotomy between instrumental and intrinsic values, other axiologies have been proposed demonstrating the complexity of the relational values concept. For instance, relational values have been described as not necessarily a values concept at the same level of instrumental values. They can also function as an epistemological framing or as a boundary object across disciplines (Stålhammar and Thorén 2019). For example, Muraca (2011) proposes an alternative axiological framework in which relational values reflect a spectrum of instrumental through to intrinsic values and, more specifically, intrinsic and relational values are two equipollent axes of a matrix.
The usefulness of relational values for ecosystem valuation is still an ongoing debate. While there have been critics about relational values being indistinct from the other two value classes (Maier and Feest, 2016, Piccolo, 2017), many studies have acknowledged that relational values present a distinct domain and can fill the gap left by the dichotomy between instrumental and intrinsic value (Gomez-Baggethun and Martin-Lopez, 2015, Jacobs et al., 2016, Arias-Arévalo et al., 2017, Klain et al., 2017, Pascual et al., 2017, Himes and Muraca, 2018). The inclusion of relational values in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) conceptual framework has helped make them rapidly popular (Pascual et al. 2017). A special issue in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability has further consolidated and expanded the definition, contextualization and application of relational values (Chan et al. 2018). In this special issue, the need to develop more empirical analyses to test the empirical evidence base of relational values has been called for (Schulz and Martin-Ortega 2018). There have also been reports of the existence of relational values in the career decisions of conservationists (Knippenberg et al. 2018), links between relational values and place-based relational landscapes literature have been made (Stenseke 2018), between relational values and protected areas (De Vos et al. 2018) and their prevalence in payment for watershed ecosystem services schemes (Bremer et al. 2018).
Despite all these advances, the operationalization of relational values and their comparison with other types of values has rarely been analyzed using quantitative empirical methods (barring Arias-Arévalo et al., 2017, Klain et al., 2017). In addition, to help characterise each value, the underlying factors which correlated with each value class would ideally be explored. Few studies have however investigated the underlying factors that may affect people’s values for ecosystems (an exception is van den Born et al. 2018). There are also existing theories such as the value belief norm theory (Stern et al. 1995) and the extinction of experience theory (Soga and Gaston 2016) which have linked ecological worldview and exposure to nature to values for nature.
In light of the uncertainties surrounding the practical interpretation of relational values compared to instrumental values, here we: (i) use correlational and factor analyses to ascertain the overlap between instrumental and relational values; and (ii) identify the factors that correlate with relational and instrumental values.
Section snippets
Case study: Values of ecosystems in Singapore
Singapore presents a unique case for the study of pluralistic valuation in the Asian context. Most of Singapore’s primary forests were lost by the end of 1920 (Corlett 1992). Inland forests were replaced by gambier and rubber plantations and subsequently by urban and industrial areas. Coastal forests were initially cleared for the cultivation of coconut, but with the increase in population, many coconut plantations were also lost as a result of land reclamation for more land and the creation of
Correlation and exploratory factor analysis between value statements
The three classes of values presented large positive correlations ranging from 0.54 to 0.74 once statements’ scores were average by value class. The strongest correlation was between relational and instrumental values (0.75 between relational and instrumental, 0.66 between instrumental and intrinsic and 0.55 between relational and intrinsic, Fig. 2, top left corner). It should be noted that only one statement for intrinsic values was used and the results pertaining to intrinsic values should be
Discussion
We found a high correlation between instrumental and relational values and that they could be loaded in the same factor with a very high Cronbach alpha (>0.9). This indicates not only that the statements for relational and instrumental values are internally valid, but that they are essentially measuring similar things and are largely redundant (Tavakol and Dennick 2011). These results suggest that, in practice, relational and instrumental values are quite similar to one another from the point
Conclusions
Relational and instrumental values were found to correlate highly and load into a unique factor under factor analysis, suggesting that they are nearly indistinguishable in practice. We found that factors such as personality, the NEP and childhood memories contributed to explain high scores in instrumental and relational values. Our results highlight the importance of psychological and personality factors research on the prediction of individuals’ relationship with nature. Our results also call
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This research is supported by the National Research Foundation of Singapore, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore. The grant is under the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) Programme. The grant number is NRF2016-ITC001-013.
References (40)
- et al.
Relational values in evaluations of upstream social outcomes of watershed payment for ecosystem services: A review
Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.
(2018) - et al.
Editorial overview: Relational values: what are they, and what’s the fuss about?
Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.
(2018) - et al.
Relational values about nature in protected area research
Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.
(2018) - et al.
The history of ecosystem services in economic theory and practice: From early notions to markets and payment schemes
Ecol. Econ.
(2010) - et al.
A very brief measure of the big-five personality domains
J. Res. Pers.
(2003) - et al.
Relational values: The key to pluralistic valuation of ecosystem services
Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.
(2018) - et al.
A new valuation school: Integrating diverse values of nature in resource and land use decisions
Ecosyst. Serv.
(2016) - et al.
Buying into conservation: Intrinsic versus instrumental value
Trends Ecol. Evol.
(2009) - et al.
Relational value, partnership, eudaimonia: A review
Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.
(2018) - et al.
Valuing nature’s contributions to people: The IPBES approach
Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.
(2017)