Southern Research Station

Title: Attitudes Toward Wildlife Species Protection: Assessing Moderating and Mediating Effects in the Value-Attitude Relationship

Author: Tarrant, Michael A.; Bright, Alan D.; Cordell, H. Ken

Date: 1997

Source: Human Dimensions of Wildlife Summer 1997, Volume 2, Number 2, pp. 1-20

Description: Framed in the cognitive hierarchy approach, we examine (1) the mediating effect of general environmental atritudes and (2) the moderating effect of factual wildlife knowledge on the relationship berween values and specific wildlife attitudes (wildlife species protection). These relationships are assessed across four wildlife constituent groups: (I) consumptive users (anglers and hunters), (2) birders (a nonconsumptive user group), (3) non-hunters, non-anglers, and non-birders (nonusers), and (4) combined consumptive and nonconsumptive users (anglers, hunters and birders). Twelve hundred and twenty residents of the Southern Appalachians completed a telephone survey during the summer of 1995. Overall, respondents demonstrated low knowledge but favorable attirudes regarding wildlife species protection. Results provided partial support for a cognitive hierarchy in which general artirudes mediate the relationship between values and specific attitudes, and the existence of knowledge as an external moderating variables. Results are discussed in the context or information-processing theories and implications for developing effective fish and wildlife communicarion araregies are considered.

Keywords: Cognitive hierarchy, enviromental attitudes, wildlife autitudes, enviromental values, wildlife recreation, wildlife knowledge

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Citation

Tarrant, Michael A.; Bright, Alan D.; Cordell, H. Ken  1997.  Attitudes Toward Wildlife Species Protection: Assessing Moderating and Mediating Effects in the Value-Attitude Relationship.   Human Dimensions of Wildlife Summer 1997, Volume 2, Number 2, pp. 1-20