Environmental stewardship is a set of actions, practices, and behaviors that individuals and communities adopt in response to environmental concerns. It is a broad and evolving concept that can be used to describe strict conservation actions, active restoration activities or sustainability-related behavior at multiple scales, from neighborhood to landscape. Stewardship is practiced by families, individuals or groups with enough capacity as well as by government agencies or by non-governmental and community-based organizations (NGOs) such as environmental associations, conservation trusts, etc.

Many people and groups are driven to take action in https://mountaincountryfarm.com/what-is-environmental-stewardship/ stewardship particularly when they are motivated by intrinsic reasons rather than benefits that are instrumental. Motives that are intrinsic include a sense of connection, a sense of responsibility for the environment, and personal learning or competence. Recently, researchers have framed intrinsic motivations around the idea of civic duty and a desire for autonomy, self-actualization, or identity (Bramston et al. 2011; Crowell et al 2015).

These motivations for individuals and groups can be masked however, by larger ecological, social, or economic contexts. It is therefore essential that local stewardship organizations and/or policymakers be aware of the underlying configurations of these elements. A better understanding and an analytical framework are needed to improve efforts to promote and encourage environmental sustainability. This article bridges this gap by providing a descriptive concept and an integrated analytical frame work for environmental management. This framework is composed of the following dimensions.