Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NR, UK,
Ambio. 2014 Mar;43(2):138-48. doi: 10.1007/s13280-013-0434-2. Epub 2013 Aug 24.
Understanding how different audience groups perceive wildlife is crucial for the promotion of biodiversity conservation, especially given the key role of flagship species in conservation campaigns. Although the heterogeneity in preferences reinforces the need for campaigns tailored to specific target audiences, many conservation education and awareness campaigns still claim to target the "general public". Audiences can be segmented according to social, economic, and cultural criteria across which species perceptions are known to vary. Different studies have investigated the preferences of different groups towards certain wildlife species, but these are largely confined to a single conservation stakeholder group, such as tourists, local communities, or potential donors in western countries. In this study, we seek to determine from a multi-stakeholder perspective, audience characteristics that influence perceptions towards wildlife at Valparai, a fragmented plateau in the Western Ghats region of the Western Ghats-Sri Lanka Hotspot. We found that stakeholder group membership was the most important characteristic followed by gender. While some characteristics had a wide-scale effect others were restricted to a few species. Our results emphasize the need to design conservation campaigns with specific audiences in mind, instead of the very often referred to "general public".
了解不同受众群体如何看待野生动物对于促进生物多样性保护至关重要，特别是考虑到旗舰物种在保护活动中的关键作用。尽管偏好的异质性加强了针对特定目标受众定制活动的必要性，但许多保护教育和宣传活动仍声称针对“公众”。可以根据社会、经济和文化标准对受众进行细分，因为物种认知在这些标准上存在差异。不同的研究已经调查了不同群体对某些野生动物物种的偏好，但这些研究主要局限于单个保护利益相关者群体，例如游客、当地社区或西方国家的潜在捐赠者。在这项研究中，我们试图从多利益相关者的角度确定影响西高止山脉-斯里兰卡热点地区西高止山脉瓦帕拉伊地区野生动物认知的受众特征。我们发现，利益相关者群体成员身份是最重要的特征，其次是性别。虽然一些特征具有广泛的影响，但其他特征则仅限于少数几种物种。我们的研究结果强调了需要针对特定受众设计保护活动，而不是经常提到的“公众”。
