People's values and influences

Why?

How do people see biodiversity, biodiversity changes and biodiversity management? We seek to understand peoples’ values, the wider mental constructs in which such values are embedded, and how they are translated through attitudes and behaviour into impacts on biodiversity, through:

• Exploring the mental constructs that individuals build around biodiversity-related issues and the links with other related concepts, such as ‘wildness’, ‘naturalness’, ‘balance’ and ‘nativeness’
• Investigating the ideas and values that shape people’s views on biodiversity management approaches, e.g., with regard to woodland restoration

We examine the ideas, values and discourses used by different people, and how they interact and conflict with each other, in order to inform biodiversity-related decision making and develop conflict management strategies.

Outcomes

• Identification of the key factors affecting the appreciation of species, habitats and diversity, and the evaluation of biodiversity management options
• Understanding how different types of information affect attitudes and attitudinal change
• Development, assessment and refinement of methods for assessing biodiversity values and changes in the ways people evaluate biodiversity

Links

• Understandings of nature: public views, conflicts and attitudes towards management
• More information on ‘How people see biodiversity’

Contacts

• Dr Anke Fischer a.fischer@macaulay.ac.uk