Understanding Conflicts about Wildlife by Catherine M. Hill & Nancy E.C. Priston

Author:Catherine M. Hill & Nancy E.C. Priston [Catherine M. Hill, Amanda D. Webber & Priston, Nancy E.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2018-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

The Cognitive Hierarchy Framework

Pamela Homer and Lynn Kahle (1988) describe attitudes as positive or negative evaluative judgements of attitudinal objects (e.g. things, people, places, activities, events). Attitudes are the faster-forming cognitive processes of individuals that are ongoing and highly adaptive (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980; Homer and Kahle 1988). Attitude measures are most frequently applied in the prediction of people’s behaviours, and are more accurate at doing so when the action, target, time and context are made explicit (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975; Ajzen 1988). For example, individuals with a positive evaluation of ‘feeding wildlife’ are more likely than those with a negative evaluation of the activity to engage in that behaviour. Furthermore, individuals with a positive evaluation of the activity ‘placing a salt lick for deer in my backyard during the fall’ would be more likely to do that exact behaviour than someone with a positive evaluation of the general activity of ‘feeding wildlife’. Attitudes can help to explain human behaviours in relation to HWC, including individuals’ engagement in activities that lead to HWC near the home (e.g. feeding deer can lead to deer damaging landscaping), and support of or opposition to different conflict-mitigation strategies.

Values are considered to be more fundamental beliefs about life goals. Values serve as principles shaping attitudes and directing behaviours through expressions of people’s basic needs (Rokeach 1973; Schwartz 2006). Typically limited in number, values are culturally learned, serve as motivational constructs for individuals and transcend specific actions and situations (Schwartz and Sagie 2000). Examples of these values include honesty, respect, patriotism and personal well-being. At the cultural level, the orientation or direction of these values is shaped by ideology. Ideology is representative of the shared beliefs held by groups of people (e.g. cultures) that enable others within those groups to understand meaning, to identify who they are and to relate to one another. Ideologies are reflected in social stereotypes, principles of resource allocation, role prescriptions, origin myths, citizenship rules and other stories or ideas that define groups (Pratto 1999).

Wildlife value orientations are reflective of how cultural ideologies provide contextual meaning to the values people hold in relation to the domain of wildlife-related thought (Manfredo, Teel and Henry 2009). For example, two people may both hold the value ‘be humane toward all living things’, but differ in how this relates to the treatment of wildlife; one may believe that people should not harm wildlife for any reason, while the other may feel it is acceptable to kill wildlife for human purposes as long as the animal does not experience unusual pain or suffering. In this example, we contend that the values of these two individuals are guided by contrasting wildlife value orientations.

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