Gratitude to nature, environmental stewardship, and well-being in 10 countries
Abstract
People may feel grateful to nature for its provisions, as both anecdotal accounts and emerging research evidence suggest. The present study further explores this experience—referred to as gratitude to nature—by examining its relationships with other nature-related constructs, environmental stewardship, psychological well-being, and physical health across 10 countries from both the Global North and Global South. We assessed the Gratitude to Nature Scale’s measurement invariance and construct validity across these diverse social contexts and observed consistently positive associations between gratitude to nature and experience with nature, nature connectedness, and anthropomorphism of nature. Our findings also reveal that individuals who possessed stronger gratitude to nature were more likely to engage in various forms of pro-environmental behaviors and that stronger gratitude was significantly linked to both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and to self-reported physical health to a lesser degree. Overall, these results encourage future research to investigate the potential of interventions based on gratitude to nature for fostering ecological stewardship and promoting well-being. This research contributes to the emerging relational discourse on human-nature relationships by emphasizing the affective connection between people and the natural world. It also echoes recent calls for cross-cultural studies in the study of human–environment relationships.
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BibTeX
@article{tam2026gratitude,
title = {{Gratitude to nature, environmental stewardship, and well-being in 10 countries}},
author = {Kim-Pong Tam and Hoi-Wing Chan and Gewei Chen},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1038/s41598-026-73988-5},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-73988-5},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Gratitude to nature, environmental stewardship, and well-being in 10 countries
AU - Kim-Pong Tam
AU - Hoi-Wing Chan
AU - Gewei Chen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/03
JO - Scientific Reports
DO - 10.1038/s41598-026-73988-5
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-73988-5
AB - People may feel grateful to nature for its provisions, as both anecdotal accounts and emerging research evidence suggest. The present study further explores this experience—referred to as gratitude to nature—by examining its relationships with other nature-related constructs, environmental stewardship, psychological well-being, and physical health across 10 countries from both the Global North and Global South. We assessed the Gratitude to Nature Scale’s measurement invariance and construct validity across these diverse social contexts and observed consistently positive associations between gratitude to nature and experience with nature, nature connectedness, and anthropomorphism of nature. Our findings also reveal that individuals who possessed stronger gratitude to nature were more likely to engage in various forms of pro-environmental behaviors and that stronger gratitude was significantly linked to both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and to self-reported physical health to a lesser degree. Overall, these results encourage future research to investigate the potential of interventions based on gratitude to nature for fostering ecological stewardship and promoting well-being. This research contributes to the emerging relational discourse on human-nature relationships by emphasizing the affective connection between people and the natural world. It also echoes recent calls for cross-cultural studies in the study of human–environment relationships.
SN - 2045-2322
ER -