Public acceptance of wildlife management interventions in Malaysia

One of the practical objectives of conservation social science is to assist wildlife managers and policy makers dealing with the public, by examining public reasoning about wildlife and thus providing a knowledge base to... [ view full abstract ]

One of the practical objectives of conservation social science is to assist wildlife managers and policy makers dealing with the public, by examining public reasoning about wildlife and thus providing a knowledge base to inform problem identification, decision-making, implementation, and communication. Research has demonstrated that the concepts of wildlife value orientations, emotions towards wildlife, and wildlife risk perceptions have predictive validity across a range of more specific outcome variables. Yet, existing research has not combined these concepts in one study. The present research examined wildlife value orientations, valence towards wildlife, and wildlife risk perceptions, to explain public acceptability of different management actions. Data were collected through a drop-off survey, distributed in the state of Johor, Malaysia (n=1062). Initial confirmatory factor analysis suggest modifications on items reflecting domination. Structural equation modelling was used to estimate relationships between variables in three models: (1) a model predicting acceptability of doing nothing, (2) a model predicting acceptability of drive shooting, and (3) a model predicting acceptability of lethal control. The three models have acceptable goodness-of fit indexes, indicating the models fit well with the sample data. Domination, valence and wildlife risk perceptions predicted acceptability of hands-off management to problem wildlife. Domination predicted acceptability of drive shooting, and none of the other concepts were significant predictors. Domination and mutualism predicted acceptability of lethal wildlife control, while valence and risk perceptions did not. The explained variance of acceptability of lethal control was larger (R²= .114) than the acceptability of the other two management actions. The results suggest that the set of concepts that are statistically significant predictors for acceptability, depends on the type of management action. This raises an important discussion whether an overarching theory can adequately explain a variety of specific outcome variables, or whether different tailor-made theories are needed to understand different outcome variables.