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Plants Promoting Happiness : Personification of Plants Increases Care for Plants

University of British Columbia. Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability; University of British Columbia. Office of the Vice-President, Students; University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning

This study examines the following question: could the personification of plants—relaying human characteristics to a non-human plant—increase pro-environmental behaviour? Through personifying plants, we believe that participants in our experiment can better relate to plants, therefore increasing their pro-environmental behaviours. Such findings will be important to the field since it could be used to personify greater aspects of nature (such as parks and forests) to elicit more pro-environmental behaviour. Our experiment was conducted at the CIRS building at the University of British Columbia. Data was observed of students and staff passing through the building during our observation period. Three conditions were observed in our experiment: 1) a personified plant, 2) a plant with scientific information, and 3) a plant with instructions for care. Measurement of pro-environmental behaviour is collected through the use of fertilizer distribution for each plant. Increased amounts of fertilizer represents more pro-environmental interaction between the plants and participants. Our finding suggests that personified plants received the most pro-environmental interaction, followed by plants with scientific information, and lastly plants with care instructions only. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Report

eng

2018-11-21

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/67837

UBCV

Undergraduate

DSpace