Forum Paper |
Corresponding author: Harry P. Andreassen ( harry.andreassen@inn.no ) Academic editor: Natasha Constant
© 2018 Harry P. Andreassen, Kristin E. Gangaas, Bjørn P. Kaltenborn.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Andreassen HP, Gangaas KE, Kaltenborn BP (2018) Matching social-ecological systems by understanding the spatial scale of environmental attitudes. Nature Conservation 30: 69-81. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.30.28289
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Mismatching in the spatial scales of social structures and ecological processes complicates the management of natural resources. Here we suggest the use of variance components to determine at which spatial scale variation in feelings, environmental attitudes and value orientation is largest and hence most exposed to conflicts. We estimated the variance components of the feeling of fear for large carnivores, environmental attitudes towards large carnivores and environmental value orientation at 3 scales (municipality, county and country) in Norway and Sweden. The feeling of fear for specific carnivores had the highest variance components at the municipality level, we found no specific scale that best explained the variance in attitudes towards carnivores in general, while attitudes based on environmental value orientation showed the highest variance components at the country level. To match the social-ecological systems, we conclude that management units have to be designed as the best possible trade-off between the social and ecological scales; i.e. largest possible to maintain ecological sustainability, but small enough to maintain a low degree of social conflicts.
carnivores, conflict, human-wildlife, management, scale, variance components
Scaling is an important issue in ecology as patterns and processes vary with scale. The most appropriate scale to study will depend on the species’, or the individuals’, perception of the landscape and the organisational level of interest. For instance, individuals, populations, ecological communities, ecosystems and landscapes will require different scales of the study (e.g.
Ideally, management units should incorporate large enough areas to ensure sustainability of the ecological process, but, at the same time, avoid incorporating excessive attitudinal variation in order to avoid problems that are outside the powers of managers. This connection between the ecological and social scale is important as management policies are dynamic and to a large extent founded on public opinion (
Attitudes are part of the cognitive hierarchy together with norms and values (
To approach a common social-ecological understanding of scale, we have taken some of the social responses connected to components of the cognitive hierarchy (i.e. feelings, attitudes and environmental value orientation) and analysed them in a typical physical way by using variance components to reveal at which spatial scale variability is being introduced to these components. We have based our analyses on the results from a questionnaire related to large carnivores. Large carnivores present a good opportunity for studying social-ecological scales since public opinion affects policy at multiple levels. The presence of carnivores changes locally, human-carnivore conflicts change locally and the management of carnivores changes from national authorities to more regional or local authorities and may also change over time (
We assumed that the relatively stable components of the cognitive hierarchy develop slowly over time and expand into larger stable socio-spatial structures, e.g. at a regional or national level, rather than changing abruptly depending on changes in the local environment. Hence, we expected that feelings (here represented by fear towards specific carnivore species) were connected to local changes in the presence of the carnivore species and thus to have the highest variation at local scales (i.e. municipality). Furthermore, we expected attitudes towards carnivores to have the highest variation at an intermediate scale (i.e. county) and environmental value orientation to have the highest variation at a large scale (i.e. country).
Data on attitudes were collected in 2011 through a telephone survey carried out by a data collection company (www.norstat.no) from 4–5 respondents in each municipality in Norway and Sweden. The data collection company (NORSTAT) bases its sample on existing registers that are publicly available when they collect data by telephone interviews. When the respondents in our study were contacted, the interviewer followed a strict protocol as dictated by standard research ethics, including presenting the purpose of the study and the agency behind it, that participation is entirely voluntary, how long the interview would take and how the results would be used (see
The survey provided answers from 2522 respondents (1508 in Norway and 1014 in Sweden) from 722 municipalities, which are combined into 40 counties from 2 countries (Norway and Sweden; Table
The number of municipalities, counties and countries analysed to describe the local, regional and national levels.
Level | Norway | Sweden |
---|---|---|
Municipality | 431 | 291 |
County | 19 | 21 |
Country | 1 | 1 |
The large carnivores in Norway and Sweden consist of brown bear Ursus arctos, wolverine Gulo gulo, lynx Lynx lynx and wolves Canis lupus. These large carnivores are managed at the national scale in both Norway and Sweden, while some of the management actions are delegated down to a local scale (county level or to local boards consisting of politicians from counties merged into specific management regions). There are differences in the numbers of carnivores between the two countries, as Sweden houses much higher densities of all large carnivore species compared to Norway (
The full questionnaire included questions characterising the respondent (e.g. sex and age), several questions that were given only to some respondents depending on whether their acceptance of carnivores was unconditional or not and questions related to management and expressions used to identify the respondents’ general environmental attitudes (
We expected that the presence of carnivores could cause local conflicts that could change humans’ attitudes towards carnivores at a local scale and even more if the carnivore species were emphasised by species names. We classified a priori the following spatial scale expected to give highest variance for the given feeling/attitude stated in the questions and expressions:
– Small (i.e. municipality) scale to questions and expressions describing feelings or attitudes towards specific carnivore species
– Intermediate (i.e. county) scale to questions and expressions describing attitudes towards carnivores in general, without naming the carnivore species
– Large (i.e. country) scale to questions and expressions describing environmental value orientation.
All questions and the scale expected to have the highest variation are listed in Table
Our results did, to some extent, confirm our predictions. The very specific questions related to fear of specific carnivore species had largest variance components at a small scale (S1 – S4; Figs
The location of the questions and statements (described in Table
The percentage of the variance components explained by municipality (white), county (grey) and country (black) for each of the questions and statements in Table
The questions and statements from the questionnaire included in the analyses, with the scale we a priori expected would explain most of the variation (small is municipality, medium is county and large is country). We registered replies to questions S1 – S4 as 1: not at all, 2: a little scared, 3: quite scared and 4: very scared; M1 as 1: too few, 2: just the right amount and 3: too many. All other questions were registered as: 1: highly disagree, disagree, 3: neither agree nor disagree, 4: agree; 5: highly agree. Note that agreement to the questions M2, M4, L4 and L6 indicates the anthropocentric view, while questions M3, M5, M6, L1–L5 and L7 are reversed and disagreement also indicates the anthropocentric view.
ID* | Expected scale | Question / Statement |
---|---|---|
Questions related to emotions | ||
S1 | Small | How scared are you of wolverine? |
S2 | Small | How scared are you of wolf? |
S3 | Small | How scared are you of brown bear? |
S4 | Small | How scared are you of lynx? |
Questions related to attitudes | ||
S5 | Small | Poaching of wolverine is acceptable |
S6 | Small | Poaching of wolf is acceptable |
S7 | Small | Poaching of brown bear is acceptable |
S8 | Small | Poaching of lynx is acceptable |
M1 | Medium | Do you think there are too few, just the right amount or too many large carnivores in your country today? |
M2 | Medium | Fear is a good enough reason to remove large carnivores |
M3 | Medium | Large carnivores are an enrichment for my nature experience |
M4 | Medium | Large carnivores limit my use of nature |
M5 | Medium | Seeing large carnivores in nature is a privilege |
M6 | Medium | Norway/Sweden is a rich country that should take responsibility for large carnivores |
Questions related to value orientation | ||
L1 | Large | Seeing tracks and signs increase my quality of life |
L2 | Large | The balance in nature is delicate and easily upset |
L3 | Large | Humans are severely abusing the environment |
L4 | Large | The so-called “ecological crisis” facing human kind has been greatly exaggerated |
L5 | Large | Plants and animals have the same rights to life on earth as humans |
L6 | Large | The balance of nature is sufficiently stable to withstand the impacts from a modern industrial society |
L7 | Large | If things continue on their present course, we will soon experience a major ecological catastrophe |
Attitudes toward the environment have frequently been studied with questionnaires at one given spatial scale, e.g. at a national or regional level (
We need to understand the role of how attitudes are developed in conservation biology since attitudes heavily influence public opinion and policy-making (
Here, we broke down the variance in our responses from a broad spectrum of questions related to environmental feelings, attitudes and value orientation into various spatial scales. As expected, the variability in the responses depended on specific spatial scales. A large degree of the variation in fear for carnivores was connected to the local scale. This connection appeared despite the low number of respondents per municipality. Contrary to our expectations, the variability in acceptance of illegal hunting of specific carnivore species was best described at the country level. General attitudes towards carnivores did not relate to any specific spatial scale, while most of the questions and expressions related to value orientation and environmental attitudes were best explained at the level of country as expected.
We argue that certain feelings or attitudes specifically related to carnivore species may be changeable and develop at local spatial scales, possibly as a result to environmental changes. For instance,
We may expect that environmental attitudes responding to the large spatial scale have developed over time and there seem to be national socio-spatial structures that are difficult to change (see also
For several decades, it has been evident that environmental management requires integration of natural and social sciences. Such a multidisciplinary approach is complex as natural resource management always is somehow specified in space. Social sciences, on the other hand, typically operate with concepts that are difficult to define in spatial terms, such as processes and discourses related to institutions, power relations and macro-level socio-economic changes or psychological aspects of human-environment interactions. In addition, except for fear, the spatial scaling of environmental attitudes seems to be more or less disconnected from the ecological processes and rather linked to large scale socio-spatial structures (
Our approach for estimating the variance components of attitudes and feelings is, however, a way to link the social-ecological systems. For instance, from a purely ecological perspective, recolonisation of carnivores in the Scandinavian Peninsula would benefit from a joint Swedish-Norwegian management model. However, the potential for conflicts increases with increasing variation in attitudes (
In Figure
A conceptual model describing how spatial scale described as the extension of an area depends on the trade-off between ecological sustainability and social conflicts. Environmental management authorities should manage as large units as possible to maintain ecological sustainability, but at the same time keeping low conflict levels, here shown by the arrow.