Where six research traditions converge.
And what becomes possible when they do.
TerraNovaID sits at the intersection of environmental psychology, motivational science, existential meaning-making, developmental psychology and systems ecology. This page is for researchers who want to understand the scientific foundation, and explore what can be built on it together.
Six traditions. One convergence.
Susan Clayton’s ecological identity construct (2003, 2012) provides the foundational definition: ecological identity as a component of self-concept shaped by one’s relationship with the natural environment. TerraNovaID’s Ecological Identity Theory extends Clayton’s work across five dimensions: developmental trajectory, meaning-making, systemic awareness, emotional register and domain-specificity.
Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory provides the motivational architecture. The framework maps ecological engagement onto the SDT continuum from external regulation through introjection and identification to integration. The core thesis (identity before behaviour) follows directly from SDT’s prediction that integrated motivation produces the most stable and autonomous forms of engagement.
Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy contributes the meaning dimension. Ecological identity is not merely a cognitive construct, it is a meaning-bearing structure. Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects provides the relational and witnessing framework. Erik Erikson’s generativity concept situates ecological identity within the developmental lifespan. Constructive-developmental psychology (Kegan, Cook-Greuter) provides the model for how identity complexity increases over time.
These traditions converge on a single insight: ecological engagement that is rooted in identity is qualitatively different from engagement rooted in information, obligation or social pressure. It is more stable, more context-independent and more resistant to competing demands.
A non-normative, non-comparative instrument.Designed for recognition, not measurement.
The Ecological Portrait is a structured reflective instrument that operationalises the six-dimension model. It is deliberately non-normative: there is no "correct" ecological identity configuration. It is non-comparative: no aggregate data, no percentiles, no population norms. And it is recognition-based: the primary output is the participant’s experience of seeing their ecological identity clearly, often for the first time.
Methodological choices include: phenomenological question design (drawing on Frankl and Macy), five-construct architecture (Felt Relationship, Values & Meaning, Agency & Hope, Time & Development, Context & Systems), Integration as cross-cutting synthesis, and (for Portrait Domains, the life-area deepening layer) seven domain-specific lenses (Food, Mobility, Work, Home, Relationships, Nature, Money). Adaptive depth calibration. Meaning-thread synthesis. The Portrait does not produce subscale scores. It produces a landscape: a coherent, qualitative picture of how the five constructs are configured for that specific person, with Integration as the thread that runs through.
The full methodology is documented internally. Researchers interested in the methodological architecture are invited to request access under a research agreement that protects the integrity of the instrument.
TerraNovaID and the Inner Development Goals.
There is a moment familiar to anyone who reads the Inner Development Goals framework closely. The framework begins from a well-documented observation: the Sustainable Development Goals describe what has to change in the world, and progress keeps stalling on something the goals themselves do not name, the inner capacities of the people expected to change it. Five dimensions answer that observation, Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating and Acting, with twenty-three skills across them, a set currently in active revision. The framework was first published in 2021, is maintained by the IDG Foundation, and comes with a free, open toolkit of methods. A broad research field and a European academic network have grown around it.
The moment comes in the dimension called Relating. One of the skills listed there is Connectedness: a person’s felt relationship with the living world. A name and a few lines of description, which is all a map of that scale can give any single capacity. Anyone who has sat with the research on how people relate to the living world knows how much is folded into those few lines: a relationship that forms early, moves through a whole life, and shapes what a person can sustain. That one skill is where TerraNovaID does all of its work. The Ecological Portrait takes the relationship the framework names in passing and builds a complete reflective instrument for it, on its own theoretical ground in ecological identity. TerraNovaID is not affiliated with the IDG Foundation, and it does not implement or measure the IDG framework. It deepens one point of it, independently: the ecological dimension of inner development.
The clearest methodological difference is deliberate. The IDG framework includes a scored self-assessment: each skill rated from one to six and drawn as a spider web, a sensible design for orientation across twenty-three capacities. The Portrait does the opposite. Nothing in it is scored, ranked or compared. A person answers open questions in their own words and receives a written reflection of the relationship they described: a mirror, not a measurement. The two designs serve different work. A spider web shows where someone stands across many capacities at once; a mirror lets someone look at one relationship long enough to recognise it as their own. That is why the Portrait exists alongside a free and open toolkit: not as an alternative to the framework, but as what one of its skills looks like when it is given a whole instrument.
The simplest way to see the difference is to put the two side by side: the few lines the framework gives Connectedness, and a finished Portrait. The methodology behind the Portrait is documented and open to scrutiny, and the instrument itself is free to walk through.
The Inner Development Goals framework is developed and maintained by the IDG Foundation and published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY); the description above follows the official framework at innerdevelopmentgoals.org.
Where this work draws from.
The framework rests on six bodies of work. Each one shaped a specific part of the Portrait. Naming them here is a small act of attribution, and a way of marking the lineage the platform sits in.
- Environmental Identity: A Conceptual and an Operational Definition
The foundational definition. Clayton names ecological identity as a component of self-concept shaped by relationship with the natural environment.
- Ecological Identity: The Development and Assessment of a New Construct
Extends Clayton across measurable dimensions. The five-construct architecture in the Ecological Portrait builds directly on this lineage.
- Self-Determination Theory
The motivational architecture behind the thesis that identity precedes behaviour. SDT predicts that integrated motivation produces the most stable forms of engagement.
- Man's Search for Meaning
Logotherapy positions meaning, not adjustment, as the primary axis of psychological life. The Portrait treats ecological identity as a meaning-bearing structure for the same reason.
- The Work That Reconnects
Provides the relational and witnessing register. Grief, gratitude and reconnection are treated as identity work, not coping behaviour.
- Generativity (in Childhood and Society)
Situates ecological identity within the lifespan. Generativity, the concern for what is left for future life, is one of the developmental anchors of the framework.
- Self-Efficacy and Social Cognitive Theory
Self-efficacy as the conviction that one can produce intended effects. Named in TNID canon as part of the agency and hope construct in the Portrait architecture.
Adjacent reading
The framework draws primarily from the six authors above. The following work is not part of that core lineage, but informs the broader thinking, in particular around time, embodiment, and the situated nature of ecological knowledge.
- Future Self Continuity
Empirical work on how connection to one’s future self shapes long-horizon decisions. Informs the Time and Development construct.
- Deep Ecology
Philosophical groundwork for ecological identity as relational rather than instrumental. Identity extended into the more-than-human world.
- The Spell of the Sensuous
Sensorial ecology and embodied cognition. Reminds the framework that ecological identity is felt before it is thought.
- Braiding Sweetgrass
Indigenous knowledge as a non-extractive form of ecological understanding. A counterweight to identity work that drifts toward the abstract.
- Environmental Culture
Anti-dualist environmental philosophy. Names the cultural patterns that quietly position humans outside the ecological field.
- Situated Knowledges, Companion Species
Knowledge as situated and entangled. Useful for thinking about Portrait data, partiality and the limits of any single observer position.
- Constructive-developmental psychology
Subject-object theory and adult development stages. Informs how the Portrait holds different developmental positions without ranking them.
- Ego Development Stages
Extended adult-development model with attention to later, more integrative stages. A reference point for how identity work matures over time.
A full bibliography, including unpublished internal sources, is shared with research partners under the standard collaboration agreement.
Research with integrity. Three forms of collaboration.
- 01
Data-based research
Anonymised, consent-based access to aggregated Portrait data for approved research projects. Individual Portrait data is never shared. All research undergoes ethical review and requires participant-level opt-in consent.
- 02
Methodological collaboration
Joint development and validation of the Portrait instrument, dimension refinement, cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric exploration. The Portrait is a living instrument, designed to improve through collaboration.
- 03
Contextual research
Ecological identity in broader cultural, educational and policy contexts. How does ecological identity develop across different societies? What institutional conditions support it? What hinders it?
All research partnerships are governed by the same red lines that apply to the platform. No research may score or rank participants. No research may use Portrait data for commercial purposes. No research may compromise individual ownership or autonomy.
Honest about the boundaries of what we understand.
- 01Does ecological identity development follow a predictable trajectory, or is it fundamentally non-linear?
- 02How does domain-specificity interact with integration over time?
- 03What is the relationship between ecological identity and ecological grief?
- 04How do structural constraints (economic, geographic, political) moderate identity-behaviour alignment?
- 05Can the Portrait meaningfully capture ecological identity across radically different cultural contexts?
These questions are open. We name them because scientific credibility is built on honesty about what is not yet known, not on the appearance of certainty. Researchers who find these questions compelling are invited to explore them with us.
We are looking for rigorous, independent researchers who share the commitment to genuine identity work.
If this resonates with your research, we would like to hear from you. Whether you are interested in data access, methodological collaboration, or contextual research, the starting point is a conversation.