Drawings as Measures of Environmental Connectedness

Drawings are external representations of internal mental models. In the current study, drawings of a place-specific environment collected from 344 college students were analyzed via factor analysis. Two emergent models correlated with natural and built environments were compared to a validated Likert-type measure of environmental connectedness, offering insight into the extent to which drawings could be used as a proxy for environmental connectedness. We found significant main effects between both natural and built environments and environmental connectedness, with the highest environmental connectedness observed for drawings containing both natural and built environment elements. This suggests: (1) individuals who conceptually link natural and built spaces are more environmentally connected than those who focus on either space alone; and (2) drawings can be used to evaluate environmental connectedness, allowing research to expand beyond samples most commonly used in current studies.