Public perceptions of risks to biodiversity

1. Public perceptions of risks to biodiversity Anke Fischer Socio-Economics Group Macaulay Land Use Research Institute

2. Structure • Understanding public perceptions of risk: approaches in social sciences • Three studies: public attitudes and perceptions of risk related to biodiversity • biodiversity management in the Cairngorms (Young & Fischer) • invasive plants versus breeding seabirds (Fischer & Van der Wal) • biodiversity conservation in developing countries (Menzel)

3. ‘Risk’ in the social sciences • risk: “potential negative impacts on something positive”? • economics (Knight 1921) • risk: probabilities known • uncertainty: probabilities unknown • social scientific approaches: qualitative (exploring) vs quantitative (measuring) • expectancy-value approach: severity * probability ( H&S )  often used in quantitative psychology

4. Example #1 Public understandings of and attitudes towards biodiversity • part of ALTER-Net RA5: “Public attitudes to biodiversity and its conservation” • previous studies: scientific concepts as the yardstick to measure public awareness and knowledge qualitative research: public understandings of and attitudes towards biodiversity issues

5. Example #1 Research questions • What does ‘biodiversity’ mean tomembers of the general public? How do they perceive certain species or habitats? • What do people value about biodiversity? • What do members of the public perceive as relevant issues? What do they see as consequences of biodiversity loss/changes? • What are their attitudes towards related measures? • Which factors influence individuals’ perceptions, values and attitudes?

6. Example #1 Study sites

7. Example #1 The Cairngorms case: methods Fischer & Young • Qualitative research • aim: gather information on individuals’ concepts and attitudes • exploratory: focus-group discussions combined with drawing exercises • discussion guide • wide range of members of the public: visitors and residents of NP and adjacent areas, mountaineers, young farmers, birdwatchers, foresters, … • sample size: n= 44 (8 groups)

8. Example #1 Concepts of biodiversity • respondents underestimate their own knowledge • often vague expressions when directly asked • but: conceptually rich insights revealed indirectly (‘foodwebs’, ‘balance’) • biodiversity is part of a complex mental construct “wildlife” “water at the centre” “only plant I know the name of: club moss” “reindeer – metaphor – shouldn’t be there” “connected” “contained in the same environment” “no hierarchy” “landscape feeding into it” Biodiversity drawings Scotland

9. Example #1 Perceptions of risks • threats to biodiversity • threats to humans resulting from biodiversity change • recreation and tourism (main threat?!!) • invasive alien species (mink, rhododendron, …) • intensive agricultural practices (grazing) • hunting • pollution • climate change: mentioned only twice

10. Example #1 Threats to biodiversity: recreation • I think myself an awful lot of the problem, beside the shooting thing, is the number of feet on the hill (local resident) • People’s feet seem to do as much damage than anything else in these sort of places (forester) • Lichens grow over thousands of years, you know? And someone goes [he claps] and it’s gone. (birdwatcher)

11. Example #1 Threats to humans from biodiversity change • Ithink very superficially, no, it doesn’t have a great impact but when you start to appreciate what is going on there and what has been there, just a matter of a few years ago, a few decades ago and you see what is there now, that is a concern (mountaineer) • I think rather than the sheer numbers it is the variety that I would regret the loss of. I don’t understand, I don’t have enough technical knowledge to know the fine detail of numbers of individual species, but it is the whole variety of turning it into a monoculture with planting of forestry or turning it over to agricultural land. I think that is a loss to our landscape (mountaineer) • knock-on effects • vague feeling of loss • You could lose species that can help your natural predators. Ladybirds or something like that that kill aphids (young farmer) • I’m sure if you lose one small animal it is going to have a knock on effect on the rest of the animals that are feeding off them. It would break a certain part of the food chain and more and more things would disappear (mountaineer) • land use implications • We’d probably lose aspects of tourism. The people that come out here to look at certain species, if they were to become extinct. (young farmer) • loss of basis of human life • As I see it if you lose you biodiversity then you lose … You’ve lost all things, forget it! (birdwatchers) • But without it we aren’t here either… (tourist)

12. Example #1 Conclusions • concepts of biodiversity: • people underestimate their own knowledge • but: conceptually rich insights are revealed indirectly • most people seem familiar with the concept of food-webs and links between elements of a system (‘balance’) • major risk in the Cairngorms: recreation, accessibility • consequences of biodiversity change for humans: • references to food webs and imbalance of systems • considered as threatening, but vague

13. Example #2 The ‘tree mallow’ case Fischer & Van der Wal Craigleith island Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica Tree mallow Lavatera arborea

14. Example #2 Survey: public attitudes • How do people perceive the two species in this situation? • What do they value about the species and the habitat? • What are their attitudes towards management options? • Are perceptions and values indeed linked to their attitudes?

15. Example #2 Tree mallow management options • No intervention • Cutting tree mallow • Introduce neutered rabbits • Spraying with herbicides

16. Example #2 Methods • quantitative approach • structured, face-to-face interviews: questionnaire • introductory part: information • random sampling of local population and visitors • n=244

17. Example #2 Methods: ranking of options Which one of these management options do you favour most? Which one do you favour least? Please use 1 to indicate the option that you find most desirable, 2 to indicate the second most desirable etc., and 4 to indicate the least favourable option. 3 4 1 2

18. Example #2 Attitudes towards management Attitude indices for tree mallow management options. grey boxes: quartiles thick vertical lines: median whiskers: percentiles 5 and 95

19. Example #2 Management options: Why?

20. Example #2 Methods: attitude scale • 11 item pairs in expectancy-value format: belief * importance  Theory of Planned Behaviour (Fishbein & Ajzen) • 3 pairs: risks associated to management When tree mallow is cut by hand, To me, that there are no people have more control than with undesirable side-effects is… other management options, and fewer undesirable side-effects will occur.

21. Example #2 Methods: attitude scale The introduction of neutered rabbits is risky, To me, that people have full because people have little control control over the impacts is… over the impacts. Using pesticides is very risky in this situation. To me, that no risk is being run with regard to the use of pesticides is…

22. Example #2 Results: risk perceptions Multinom regression: pseudo r2=0.47 (C&S) n=233, beliefs: 1 disagree, 5 agree; importance: 1 low, 5 high all b and i different (p<0.01) except icut and ipest

23. Example #2 Results: summary • perceptions of risk: not only related directly to biodiversity changes, but also relevant with regard to biodiversity management options • perceived risks of intervention are determinants of choices

24. Example #3 Biodiversity protection in developing countries Menzel 2004 • Willingness to pay (WTP) of German citizens for biodiversity conservation in developing countries • Does the Protection Motivation Theory help to explain WTP?

25. Methods • contingent valuation: WTP • PMT: framework for explanatory variables • n=1,017 • telephone survey: questionnaire

26. Protection Motivation Theory Rogers 1975 Threat appraisal Behavioural intention Coping appraisal

27. Protection Motivation Theory Rogers 1975 Threat appraisal Perceived severity Behavioural intention Perceived probability Coping appraisal

28. Threat appraisal as a determinant of WTP Threat appraisal Perceived severity r=0.2** Behavioural intention (here: WTP) Perceived probability Coping appraisal pseudo r2=0.33 Responsibility

29. Conclusions • qualitative and quantitative approaches • #1 Cairngorms: • main threat recreation? • consequences for humans  systemic thinking, but vague • #2 tree mallow: • risks due to management of invasives! • perceived risk of options – determinant of preferences • #3 WTP: • threat appraisal – determinant of behavioural intention

30. Thank you.