The Spirit of the Appalachian Trail: Community, Environment, and Belief

Chapter 7. Environmental Values and Learning on the Trail

chApTer 7 enVironMenTAl VAlueS And leArning on The TrAil The Hiker Survey—Ethics Sections The second major source of information on hiker ethics was the self-reported perspectives of the AT hikers themselves. My hiker survey incorporated sixteen questions concerning ethical values, with an emphasis on environmental ethics and care for other people; and thirteen questions concerning how the AT trip had influenced the hikers’ ethics. In other words, the questionnaire first asked what the hikers considered to be important ethical issues, and second, if the AT hiking experience had taught them anything about environmental care or motivated them to act on behalf of the environment or people in need. Hikers could score each question from “not at all true” to “very true” on a five-point scale. The questionnaire utilized three negative statements about environmentalism in the first set of sixteen questions, and one negative statement about the value of the trail as learning environment in the second set of thirteen. These “reverse” questions made certain that respondents were really reading the sentences and were not randomly circling one number. Reversals also reduced political bias, by allowing someone who was skeptical about the importance of environmental issues to score a more neutral statement as “very true.”1 The AT survey addressed frequent points of discussion in academic environmental ethics, including whether people can be simultaneously oriented toward care of human beings and the natural environment. The process of trail corridor preservation itself excludes forms of human use that compete with recreational activities.2 Environmental ethicists have contrasted anthropocentric (humancentered ) and ecocentric (oriented toward all living creatures and ecological environmental Values and learning on the Trail 120 processes) ethics. Thomas Vale, in his review of the meaning of American wilderness , proposes that wilderness can serve as “a vision of moral philosophy,” or an ethical stage of human development. On one side are the biocentrists or ecocentrists, who believe they can defend exploited nature from big business, capitalism, and the materialistic middle class. On the other side are the anthropocentrists , who recognize care for nature “as a uniquely human trait,” or who embrace “an active role for people in the transformation of nature.”3 Considering that surveys have concluded wilderness users are well-educated and economically privileged, a second question is: Are AT hikers a snobby elite with little interest in the recreational and environmental needs of people who do not have the freedom to take to the woods? Thomas Vale termed this negative interpretation “wilderness as aristocratic castle.”4 A third question, with a substantial academic literature, concerns how people develop in-depth knowledge of environmental problems and solutions within their home region and the habitats they depend on for food, water, and energy. The bioregional movement has encouraged people to recognize the species present where they live and to become familiar with ecosystem protection issues near their residence and employment. Because visitors to the AT are largely from the eastern and midwestern states, they should be encountering many environmental problems during their hikes, such as noticeable air pollution , that also concern their home counties and cities. The survey compared hiker concern for wilderness protection to concern for conserving the rural and historic landscapes, also subject to encroachment by development pressures in the populated East.5 Interpreting the Survey Responses Hikers rated the ethical statements from 1 to 5, with 1 as “not at all true,” 3 as “somewhat true,” and 5 as “very true.”6 The mean is the average response, and the median is the response falling in the middle of all the replies—half will be higher and half will be lower. The mode is the most common response overall, the value selected by the highest percentage of respondents. Many of the strongly positive responses to environmental ethical values also had relatively low variation— that is, a majority of the AT hikers agreed that pollution and wildlife protection were important. In contrast, hiker responses to a question about the spiritual environmental Values and learning on the Trail 121 or religious value of nature often had high variance, indicating a wider range of perspectives and individual experience. The analysis utilized both parametric and nonparametric statistical tests. Often, with this type of data, nonparametric tests find a greater number of significant relationships between variables (factors ). To avoid cluttering the text, nonparametric results are distinguished as NP, and the bulk of the numerical results have been tucked away...