There are some controversies surrounding the CNS. According to Perrin and Benassi,Perrin, J. L., & Benassi, V. A. (2009). The connectedness to nature scale: A measure of emotional connection to nature? Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29(4), 434-440. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.03.003 “after reanalyzing data from [Mayer and Frantz’s] article, collecting and analyzing our own data, and conducting a content analysis of CNS scale items, we conclude that the CNS does not measure an emotional connection to nature.” Perrin and Benassi provided a number of reasons for why they concluded the CNS does not measure emotions towards nature. For example, Mayer and Frantz use the word feel in eight out of the fourteen items on the CNS. Perrin and Benassi argue that the word feel, as it is used in the items of the CNS (“I feel that all inhabitants of the Earth, human and nonhuman, share a common life force”), does not mean an emotional state but a “cognitive assessment,”. Based on the definition of the word feel as cognition, Mayer and Frantz were correct in using this word in the measurement of a person's beliefs; however, they cannot accurately call the scale an affect-measuring one since the use of feel does not suggest an emotion. Nearly half of the items on the CNS involve no emotional content, while the rest contain that word feel, which in this context, really refers to cognition rather than an emotional state of being, according to Perrin and Benassi. Using data from their own studies, Perrin and Benassi “suggest that the CNS may be measuring a cognitive identity dimension of one’s relationship with nature,”. Perrin and Benassi suggest that the items of the CNS should be revised to clearly ask about a person's beliefs, not to be confused with a person's emotions, and that a new scale should be devised to measure one's emotions and the relation to the environment since the CNS does not.
