1. American Attitudes Toward Wildlife: 1978-2014
Jeremy T. Bruskotter & Kelly George
Terrestrial Wildlife Ecology Lab
School of Environment & Natural Resources

2. Changing policies toward animals
Policies aimed at wild and domestic animals have changed dramatically over the past half century
Increases in policies promoting the welfare of domestic animals, be they livestock or pets
Change from policies promoting the eradication of predators to policies promoting protection and restoration

3. Changes in attitudes? What caused these policy changes?
Kellert hypothesized that American society witnessed a significant shift in the way people viewed wildlife, as evidenced by their treatment of predatory animals

4. Kellert’s 1978 work
Kellert interviewed 3,107 US residents about their attitudes toward animals Kellert (1985) reported attitude scores for 26 wild and domestic animals

5. Explaining changing attitudes
Manfredo and colleagues (2003, 2009) suggested changes in the way we value wildlife reflect changes in social conditions
Changes that promote better conditions allow for a shift away from ‘self’ focus (utilitarian, domination) toward an other focus (mutualism) where wildlife is viewed less as a resource and more a part of one’s moral community

6. Percent Mutualist by Urbanization
Another example of our findings, exploring the question of change
To explore how societal changes may be impacting the composition of values throughout the west, we can look at variables such as urbanization that are indicative of modernization and plot states similar to Inglehart’s approach in plotting countries (we’ve drawn upon Inglehart’s work which introduced a theory of value shift which states that modernization is contributing to changes in overall life values in countries like the US)
We see a similar relationship with income and education.
While we don’t have longitudinal data yet, we see patterns consistent with what we’d expect if some of these demographic trends are driving change at a societal level.
[The findings I show here are merely descriptive for illustration purposes; we’ve also tested these relationships in HLM]
% “mutualist” assoicated with income (R = 0.75), education (R = 0.82), & urbanization (R = 0.64)
r = .75 (“large” effect)

7. Have attitudes toward wildlife changed?
To date, few studies have addressed the question
Focus has been on single species (e.g. wolves)
These studies show conflicting results
Very little evidence regarding if/how attitudes toward wildlife have changed

8. Methods
In February, 2014 data were gathered via an online questionnaire administered through Qualtrics platform
We used a probability-based web panel (GfK) to contact representative samples from three US regions (n = 400 x 3)
Data were weighted using a variety of social and demographic indicators

9. Measures and initial analyses
Included all of Kellert’s 26 items
Reduced measures of WVOs (mutualism [3] and domination [3]) and a three-item measure of intrinsic value
Calculated Cohen’s d > 0.4 to gauge substantive differences in mean scores

10. Results
Average absolute mean difference for 26 items was 0.48 (7 pt scale)
Average change in rank (of 26) was 2.08
Mean absolute d value was 0.33
31% of species (8) exhibited d values > 0.40
6 exhibited increases (avg. mean ∆ = 0.94)
2 exhibited decreases (avg. mean ∆ = )

11. Changes in attitudes…
+ Bat (d = 0.78) + Vulture (d = 0.66) + Rat (d = 0.53) + Shark (d = 0.53) + Wolf (d = 0.50) + Coyote (d = 0.40) - Swan (d = 0.45) - Raccoon (d = 0.43) - Trout (d = 0.39)

12. Attitudes toward wolves….
very positive neutral very negative

13. Follow up… explaining changes
Used PCA to create an index of animals for which attitudes were more positive in 2014 than 1978
Correlated the resulting animal index with measures of mutualism, domination and intrinsic value measures
Regressed animal index score(s) on all three measures

14. Explaining changes in attitudes toward animals
Value Orientations Measures
Domination
Mutualism
Intrinsic
Animal Index R
-0.20***
0.29***
0.30***
Std. ß
-0.11***
0.20***
0.19***
R2 = 0.14

15. Summary Results indicate that after 36 years…
Attitudes of US residents toward 6 historically stigmatized species were more positive, 2 more negative
Attitudes toward these species were positively associated with measures of mutualism and belief in wildlife’s intrinsic value, and negative associated with domination

16. Lingering questions…?
To what extent are changing social conditions driving changes in WVOs?
Will increased positive attitudes toward stigmatized species continue to become more positive?
What is the role of other factors...ecological knowledge, species distributions and densities, direct experience

17. Questions?