Integrating Values and Identity to Understand Conservation Conflicts

Psychological research on human values and identity provide important insights for understanding conservation conflicts. However, these theoretical traditions rarely intersect; thus, it is not clear how conservation... [ view full abstract ]

Psychological research on human values and identity provide important insights for understanding conservation conflicts. However, these theoretical traditions rarely intersect; thus, it is not clear how conservation professionals should integrate such insights.  Values theory holds that values are formed early in life, stable throughout one’s lifetime, and important determinants of how people think and behave.  Value differences are often cast as the ultimate determinants of social conflict.  However, because values are viewed as relatively fixed, values theory implies that conflicts will persist as long as value differences persist.  In contrast to the fixed, stagnant view of values, identity theory holds that human attitudes, norms and behaviors are shaped profoundly by the social context in which they occur.  How individuals think and behave is a function both of the inter-group context (e.g., extent of group conflict) and the extent to which individuals identify with relevant groups, which affects their motivation to comply with group expectations.  Here we use data from three studies to explore the relationship between individuals’ social identities (the extent to which individuals identify with environmentally-relevant interest groups) and their wildlife value orientations (WVOs).  We find moderate-strong relationships between identities and WVOs, and show how both WVOs and identities help explain opposition to a variety of conservation actions.  We discuss how theory on values and identity might be integrated to better understand conservation conflicts.