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Coastal regions around the world are growing more urbanized. In the United States, for example, the population density in cities along the coast is more than five times the national average. Density like this can easily impact shoreline health. But what if urbanized living also distorts how residents think about their coastal ecosystems? “How do people see the connections between coastal societies and marine systems?” says Steven Scyphers, an expert in socio-environmental resiliency at the University of Southern Alabama. “And how does that influence their views about nature and how they act to protect it?”

Scyphers is part of a research team that revealed in a new study how people living in highly urban coastal settings amid gray infrastructure like roads, levees, and dykes, tend to think about shoreline ecology in simpler ways than those who live in more suburban settings. Urbanites, they found, are also less likely to engage in pro-environmental activities.

The research team surveyed roughly 1,400 coastal residents from eight states along the US east coast, asking respondents to list important features of a healthy shoreline. They also asked participants to assess how these factors like water quality, recreational and cultural activities, storm protection, and commercial fisheries are interrelated. Finally, they asked each respondent to describe their participation in environmental activities, such as contributing time or money to conservation causes, voting for environmentally conscious political candidates, or behaving in environmentally friendly ways.

Using a technique called fuzzy cognitive mapping, the scientists then built a mental model for each respondent—a representation of how they perceive the interactions between natural and built environments along the coast. The scientists also rated the level of urbanization and the extent of shoreline hardening, such as the presence of sea walls, culverts, dams, and coastal roads in the county where each respondent lived.

Analyzing the data showed that when thinking about coastal health, people tended to cluster into one of two groups: those with linear views about shoreline ecosystems and those with more holistic views. A linear thinker, for example, might be satisfied with building a new sea wall to address coastal erosion, while a holistic pattern thinker would also consider the consequent loss of natural habitat and weigh additional steps to minimize those effects.

When the researchers dug into the demographic data, they found that the linear thinking group consisted largely of urbanites, while the holistic group came from less urbanized settings. There were some other factors, says Jennifer Helgeson, a research economist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland and a coauthor on the study, “but the urbanization gradient was the primary factor.”

The team also found that the linear thinkers were more likely to hold homogenized beliefs about coastal sustainability compared with suburbanites. That is, mental models were more alike within the urban cluster than within those of the less urbanized cluster.

Because this study is based around correlations, distinguishing between cause and effect is difficult. Perhaps linear-style thinkers prefer living in urban settings with more artificial structures, or perhaps living in a city causes people to adopt more linear interpretations of natural processes. “We’re not able to say a lot about causality,” Helgeson acknowledges. But because the data set was so big, “we’re confident in the statistical findings,” she adds.

Michael Levy, a private sector ecologist and data analyst who investigated similar issues regarding sustainable agriculture while completing his doctoral thesis at the University of California, Davis, sees these findings as pioneering. “It’s exploratory, but [it] opens up new avenues for study,” says Levy, who was not involved in the research. “The links they’re positing are plausible and are important if they’re right.”

Scyphers, Helgeson, and their team call the broad trend “urbanized knowledge syndrome”—a pattern of linear, homogenized thinking about coastal ecosystems that grows worse with increasing urban development. It suggests that as coastal environments become more built up, people lose their appreciation and understanding of the complexity of the natural world. “These findings point towards not very good outcomes,” notes Helgeson, “especially as climate change impacts increase.”

The scientists propose two paths to break the cycle: changes in government and changes in people. The top-down approach is to expand local representation in government land management decisions to foster more innovative public policy solutions for sustainable coastal urban areas. The other approach is to invest in public education campaigns.

“Environmental education is one thing that’s actually shown proven outcomes,” says Helgeson. “Educating kids in an urban setting, for example; actually going out and learning what the system is like.”

There are no easy fixes, but with nearly 70 percent of the world’s population projected to become urban dwelling by 2050, it’s essential to find effective solutions. To do that, we need to understand how people think about sustainability.