main assignment is a 3,500-word essay. You can choose from the following options:
Option 1: Key Concepts
Choose one of the following concepts and discuss in what ways it may shape our understanding of environmental values and human-nature relationships.
a) Nature’s Contributions to People (NCPs)
b) Eudaimonic Values
c) Natural Capital
Option 2: Policy Instruments and Methods
Choose one of the following policy instruments or methods and discuss whether it is a useful tool to incorporate environmental values into decision-making about the environment.
a) Social and Environmental Accounting
b) Rights of Nature
c) Payments for Ecosystem Services
Option 3: Valuing Environments with Q methodology
Choose one factor that emerged from your Q methodology group project and contextualise this factor within the academic literature on valuing environments.
Consider questions such as: ‘What values may explain this factor/viewpoint?’; ‘What does this factor tell us about how respondents ‘value environments’?; ‘Which theories and/or conceptual frameworks for valuing environments might serve to interpret this factor?’
In your essay, please also clarify how many Q sorts had a significant association with this factor as well as the percentage of study variance that it explained.
For context, please provide a complete ‘factor array’ of this factor (cf. Watts and Stenner 2012) with your essay – this will not count towards the word count.
While many of these topics will have been covered to some extent in lectures, essays should be primarily based on your own research and readings of (primarily academic) literature that you have independently identified.
