On Environmental Moral Thinking: Outdoor Recreation as a Context for Development

Revision with unchanged content. As issues related to climate change and the environmental impact of human behavior promolgate a pervasive sense of urgency to action at both the individual and global level, a fundamental question surfaces as to our rela tionship with, and responsibility to, the natural environment. This study explores the types and ways in which individuals morally think about the natural environment in certain outdoor recreation activities. More specifically, this study highlights two distinct types of environmental moral thinking identified as anthropocentric/egocentric and biocentric. These two distinct types of thinking underly the investigation of further inquery into: Whether different outdoor recreation contexts elicit distinct types of enviromental moral thinking Whether differences exist among men and women as to the most important types of environmental moral thinking -Whether a specific type of environmental moral thinking is more predictive of acting in an environmentally-sensitive manner. The book s audience is intended towards those professionals and researchers in the fields of natural resource management, outdoor education, ecopsychology, moral development, and moral philosophy.