An Agent-Based Model of the Extinction of Experience: How Nature Availability and Connectedness to Nature Co-Evolve Over Time

It has been suggested that increasing urbanization is gradually reducing opportunities for people to experience nature in their everyday lives. According to the Extinction of Experience (EoE) framework, this decline can trigger a vicious cycle: as opportunities for nature experience diminish, people may become increasingly disconnected from nature and less motivated to protect what remains—further reducing nature availability and reinforcing this vicious cycle. Despite its intuitive appeal, the EoE has largely remained a verbal theory, investigated primarily through cross-sectional studies that examine isolated relationships between its core components—nature availability, nature experience and connectedness to nature—at a single point in time. As a result, the dynamic properties of the EoE, such as feedback loops and tipping point dynamics, have not been formally tested or modelled. In this study, we seek to address this gap by using agent-based modelling (ABM) to simulate the emergence of the EoE over time. Our model centres on the interplay between nature availability, nature experience and connectedness to nature, and is parameterized using existing cross-sectional data. Through simulation, we explore how varying levels of greenspace availability influence system behaviour. Our analyses show that when greenspace coverage falls below 23% in our ABM, a self-reinforcing feedback loop emerges, consistently leading to the EoE. Conversely, when greenspace exceeds 25%, this vicious cycle is mitigated—or even reversed—into a virtuous cycle, where nature experience and connectedness to nature reinforce one another over time. Although exact thresholds vary depending on parameter values, the model robustly demonstrates the potential for tipping point dynamics: small reductions in greenspace can result in disproportionate, non-linear shifts toward a full EoE.