Invasive plant suppresses charismatic seabird – the construction of attitudes towards biodiversity management options

Abstract

Public attitudes towards biodiversity issues and the value judgments underlying biodiversity management and conservation are still poorly understood. This has raised serious concerns regarding the effective use of public participation in biodiversity policy making. We conducted quantitative face-to-face interviews with members of the general public in southeast Scotland to assess attitudes towards biodiversity management and examine attitude formation. For this, we applied social psychological attitude–behaviour theories to a case study investigating biodiversity management options for an island ecosystem in which the abundance of a charismatic seabird, the Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) is compromised by the expansion of a tall invasive plant, tree mallow (Lavatera arborea). We found that attitudes as expressed by members of the public are informed by both value- and knowledge-based elements. Our research provides clear support for the notion that, in a conservation context, value-based principles matter to the public. Out of a set of seven conservation-related values, ‘balance’ and ‘naturalness’ were important factors that related strongly to the respondents’ attitudes. These relationships were even stronger for individuals emotionally involved with the topic. Other value-based principles such as uniqueness, autochthony and endangeredness of the species involved appeared to be of lesser relevance. The findings provide evidence that attitudes can be considered as distinct constructs that offer valuable and meaningful information to biodiversity policymakers and managers, and allow empirical insights into the way value judgments influence biodiversity management and conservation.

Introduction

Participatory approaches are increasingly called for in nature conservation and biodiversity policymaking, as public involvement is seen to foster successful solutions through enhanced public acceptance (Birner and Wittmer, 2004, Fischer, 2005, Ericson, 2006). However, two common criticisms are that members of the general public might have insufficient knowledge and motivation to contribute to environment-related decision making in a valid and meaningful way, and that their attitudes might be too unstable as a basis for reliable choices (Caplan, 2003, Freese and Rüffer, 2005, Ariely et al., 2006). There is a growing body of literature that links social psychological and sociological approaches with questions of wildlife and habitat management, which sheds light on the cultural and psychological contexts of public attitudes (Beedell and Rehman, 2000, Skogen, 2001, Ericsson and Heberlein, 2003, Kaczensky et al., 2004). Moreover, environmental economic approaches suggest ways to assess public preferences for biodiversity-related environmental goods and services building on categories such as use and non-use values (Pearce and Turner, 1990, Callicott, 1997, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003). Nevertheless, the factors that inform these preferences, i.e., the construction of attitudes with regard to biodiversity management, as well as their stability over time, remain poorly understood, as social scientific approaches are still not tightly linked to conservation-related topics (Mascia et al., 2003, Clayton and Brook, 2005). We suggest that the concept of values, which can be taken as guiding principles that provide general orientation for living (Rokeach, 1973, Dreezens et al., 2005), might improve our understanding of the ways individuals make choices between different biodiversity management options. This can be of high relevance for conservationists to help reflect upon the implicit values of conservation and biodiversity management. In addition to the work conducted earlier in the development of conservation biology (Ratcliffe, 1977), a number of more recent publications point out the need to examine the values underlying conservation policies in a critical manner (Harrison, 1993, Barry and Oelschlaeger, 1996, Matsuda, 1997). A greater awareness of public attitudes and their genesis would also allow better prediction of the acceptance of future biodiversity management measures, and facilitate the development of suitable ways of communicating these, hence increasing the likelihood of biodiversity management success.

Our study is based on three interrelated theoretical notions. First, we assume that the mental concepts that individuals hold, the evaluations these concepts might imply, and the attitudes they result in have been and are constantly being formed in interaction with the individuals’ social and natural environment (Larochelle et al., 1998, Schwarz and Bohner, 2001). How people view biodiversity-related issues is thus based on the concepts they have developed which can be considered as neither “wrong” nor “right”. Second, our thinking is based on attitude–behaviour theories and their extensions that include value orientations and basic beliefs (Ajzen, 1988, Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987, Frey and Irle, 1993). In this context, values are understood as standards that serve as guiding principles in a person’s life. In comparison to attitudes, values are assumed to be much more stable over time whilst also much more general and independent from concrete situations (Rokeach, 1973). Attitude–behaviour and related theories describe values as factors that inform attitudes, which in turn are considered one of the precursors of behavioural intentions and eventually, actual behaviour. These complex models have been successfully applied in the biodiversity arena to explain the relationship between general value orientations and attitudes towards wildlife and the natural environment (Fulton et al., 1996, Kaltenborn et al., 1998, Schultz and Zelezny, 1999, Thøgersen and Ölander, 2002), as well as towards environmental health topics (Harreveld and Van der Pligt, 2004, Dreezens et al., 2005). Third, we highlight the fact that conservation – like other types of individual and institutional activities – is influenced by value judgments (Harrison, 1993, Barry and Oelschlaeger, 1996, Matsuda, 1997), and that the criteria that underlie management decisions and policy making in nature conservation can be considered crystallisations of values. Ratcliffe’s (1977) conservation criteria are examples of such crystallised values, and a number of authors expand on selected criteria such as balance (Wallington et al., 2005), autochthony (Peretti, 1998), endangeredness (Rolston, 1997), naturalness (Götmark, 1992, Hunter, 1996, Machado, 2004), similarity to humans (Tisdell et al., 2006) and uniqueness (Vane-Wright et al., 1991, Montgomery, 2002), whilst others address the relationship between several of these criteria and individuals’ aesthetic and visual preferences for landscapes (Purcell and Lamb, 1998, Van den Berg and Koole, 2006). We found these values also in cross-European qualitative studies on attitudes towards biodiversity management that involved members of the general public from a wide range of backgrounds (Buijs et al., 2006a).

Our study addresses the role that value-based criteria play in the formation of attitudes towards concrete biodiversity management measures. We apply the value concept and related social psychological constructs to an empirical study on management options for an island ecosystem where the expansion of a tall and easily identifiable invasive plant, tree mallow (Lavatera arborea) restricts breeding of a charismatic seabird species, the Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica). We present results from 236 quantitative face-to-face interviews on (i) the perception of both tree mallow and puffins among members of the general public, (ii) public attitudes towards concrete options regarding the local management of tree mallow, (iii) value-based principles with regard to conservation in general and (iv) the relationship between perceptions, values and attitudes towards concrete management options. Our study thus provides specific insights in the contentious issue of management decisions regarding invasive species (Peretti, 1998, Simberloff, 2003), whilst furthering our generic understanding of the decision processes of individuals – whether laypersons or experts in the field – with respect to biodiversity management options.