About environment empathy

Environmental empathy, although still need more clear definition, seems already exsiting in somewhere of our environmental cognition. When people say I feel great when I see the trees grow strong and health, doesn't it a like of empathy? Although we do not really know the "happiness" of the trees, but seems the mirror in our mind feels the happiness. Can these feelings extent to a landscape, a region, even to the earth? If it does, how large of our mind mirror can cantain? Furthermore, can we apply this as an professional ethic of the profession of landacpe architecture? What is the professional ethic of a landscape architecture?

宜君的專討摘要

Previous research has indicated that to induce empathy for the environment leads to the activation of pro-environmental intentions. Environmental art activities are here proposed to serve as media to induce environmental empathy. In this study, environmental art is used to refer to art dealing with ecological and/or environmental issues. During developing process of an environmental art project, a lot of techniques are used to investigate the site. It is hypothesized that this way of learning about a place and presenting responses of it leads to the forming of empathy for the environment. A group of college students who attained an environmental art course were interviewed to examine qualitative aspects of environmental art activities in forming environmental empathy. Interviews were digital-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were content-analyzed, looking for commonalties and distinctions between individual accounts. Participants spoke of experiences of forming affective and cognitive responses toward the environment through activities and the kind of relationships they develop with environment. It is also found that the representational characteristic of environmental art activities facilitates the formation of environmental empathy.