‘Although I use science, it’s an emotional thing’: conservation practitioners’ use of positive affect to frame messages about threatened birds
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Accepted Manuscript (AM)
Author(s)
Ainsworth, Gillian Barbara
Burns, Georgette Leah
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2020
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Show full item recordAbstract
Birds are of significant scientific and public interest yet although human interactions with birds are widespread and diverse in nature, relatively few people participate in conservation initiatives. Understanding how conservation practitioners describe conservation issues and whether this resonates with recipients’ attitudes could help create more appealing conservation strategies. This study applied a new typology of 12 avifaunal attitudes during 74 qualitative interviews with Australian conservation practitioners from the government, non-government, private, public and scientific sectors to investigate how they frame ...
View more >Birds are of significant scientific and public interest yet although human interactions with birds are widespread and diverse in nature, relatively few people participate in conservation initiatives. Understanding how conservation practitioners describe conservation issues and whether this resonates with recipients’ attitudes could help create more appealing conservation strategies. This study applied a new typology of 12 avifaunal attitudes during 74 qualitative interviews with Australian conservation practitioners from the government, non-government, private, public and scientific sectors to investigate how they frame threatened bird issues. Messages about threatened bird conservation were typically positive and framed according to four major themes: morality, intrinsic value, empathy and loss. A strong link between empathy for wildlife and moral justification for preventing extinctions emerged. We recommend that public messages advocating for threatened bird conservation could be framed in positive ways that arouse emotions. Expressing a broad range of attitudes could appeal at both public interest and policy-maker levels and assist with developing more effective frames to capture some of the complex social landscape within which threatened species conservation operates. These findings could apply to wildlife conservation in Australia and elsewhere. Finally, the typology can assist with developing appropriately framed and targeted conservation engagement strategies.
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View more >Birds are of significant scientific and public interest yet although human interactions with birds are widespread and diverse in nature, relatively few people participate in conservation initiatives. Understanding how conservation practitioners describe conservation issues and whether this resonates with recipients’ attitudes could help create more appealing conservation strategies. This study applied a new typology of 12 avifaunal attitudes during 74 qualitative interviews with Australian conservation practitioners from the government, non-government, private, public and scientific sectors to investigate how they frame threatened bird issues. Messages about threatened bird conservation were typically positive and framed according to four major themes: morality, intrinsic value, empathy and loss. A strong link between empathy for wildlife and moral justification for preventing extinctions emerged. We recommend that public messages advocating for threatened bird conservation could be framed in positive ways that arouse emotions. Expressing a broad range of attitudes could appeal at both public interest and policy-maker levels and assist with developing more effective frames to capture some of the complex social landscape within which threatened species conservation operates. These findings could apply to wildlife conservation in Australia and elsewhere. Finally, the typology can assist with developing appropriately framed and targeted conservation engagement strategies.
View less >
Journal Title
Australasian Journal of Environmental Management
Copyright Statement
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management (AJEM), 12 Nov 2020, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14486563.2020.1830446
Note
This publication has been entered as an advanced online version in Griffith Research Online.
Subject
Environmental sciences
Human society