There is growing recognition that environmental management decisions taken by key conservation stakeholders such as farmers are underpinned by both economic and psycho-social factors. However, conservation psychology is still in infancy and there are few validated tools suitable for measuring psycho-social constructs in the Global South. Subjective connection with nature (CWN) is considered to be the basis for pro-conservation attitudes and behaviours but has so far received only scant attention from research into farmers’ decision-making. Here, we introduce a new scale of affective CWN tailored for use in rural areas of the Global South and provide the first field assessment of cognitive and affective CWN in the rural tropics. Our survey found high levels of CWN among non-indigenous farmers living at a major Amazonian deforestation frontier in Brazil. This suggests that CWN has the potential to positively influence farmers’ environmental views and decisions. We also highlight the importance of understanding what kind of “nature” people feel most connected to when responding to CWN measures.
The results of the program evaluation confirmed its good efficiency. The coverage and hearing tests results are comparable to those from other countries conducting similar national hearing screening programs.
Inner phenomena, such as personal motivations for pursuing sustainability, may be critical levers for improving conservation outcomes. Most conservation research and policies, however, focus on external phenomena (e.g., ecological change or economic processes). We explored the factors shaping 9 conservation attitudes toward forest and wildlife protection among colonist farmers around an Amazonian deforestation frontier. Our data comprised 241 face‐to‐face quantitative surveys, complemented with qualitative insights from open‐ended questionnaire responses and opportunistic semistructured interviews. To account for the full spectrum of possible inner motivations, we employed measures of nature connection (indicating biospheric motivation) and personal values organized around the traditionalism (traditionalist through to high openness to change) and universalism dimensions (egoistic through to altruistic motivations). We used averaged beta‐binomial generalized linear models to assess the role of external factors (socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and environmental) and personal (inner) motivations on the variation in attitudes. Each attitude was modeled separately. The relative importance of each predictor was judged by the proportion of models where it appeared as significant. Proconservation views were expressed by the majority (at least 65%) of the respondents in 7 out of the 9 attitude models. The most consistent predictors were emotional nature connection and personal values (significant in 4–6 out of 9 models), rather than external phenomena (significant in 0–5 models). However, the poorest farmers had lower scores on the agreement with prioritizing nature over development (𝛽 = –0.52, 95% CI: –0.96 to –0.07). Qualitative data also indicated that economic barriers hinder forest conservation on farms. These results suggest that biospheric, traditionalistic, and altruistic motivations promote people's proconservation attitudes, but nurturing these latent motivations is unlikely to improve conservation outcomes if material poverty remains unaddressed. Integrating the inner–outer perspective into conservation thinking and practical interventions could foster environmental stewardship and increase human well‐being.
1. Rewilding is an increasingly common conservation approach, aiming to restore ecosystem processes and minimise human intervention. Rewilding has the potential to profoundly change landscapes and people-nature relations. These issues prompt an ongoing debate about how and if rewilding should be done.2. Farmers are key stakeholders in this debate; they stand to be both affected by and influence the trajectory of rewilding initiatives developing in the United Kingdom and globally. Despite this, a comprehensive understanding of farmers' perceptions towards rewilding is lacking.3. Here, we focus on how members of the farming community in England perceive common rewilding scenarios (beaver release, farm-level rewilding and landscape-scale rewilding), and how these perceptions shape farmers' attitudinal support for rewilding practices.4. Using thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 36 farmers and farming representatives, we show that the diversity of famers' attitudes can be understood through the prism of perceptions on five core issues: (a) the perceived need for restoration action, (b) the ecological effectiveness of rewilding, (c) rewilding's compatibility with ensuring food security, (d) rewilding's compatibility with rural lifestyles, livelihoods and economies and (e) multidimensional justice of rewilding initiatives. These issues are rooted in collective farming values, and farmers' perceptions of these issues are influenced by mental models, perceived social impacts and perceived ecological outcomes of rewilding initiatives. Diverse perceptions result in a range of attitudes, from enthusiastic support to strong opposition to different rewilding practices.
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