Reviving wood-pastures for biodiversity and people: A case study from western Estonia

Wood-pastures are associated with high cultural and biodiversity values in Europe. However, due to their relatively low productivity, large areas of wood-pastures have been lost over the last century. In some areas, incentive schemes have been developed to revive wood-pastures. We investigated the effects of one such scheme in western Estonia. We compared the structure of grazed wood-pastures (old and restored) to those of abandoned wood-pastures and ungrazed forest stands to explore the effects of management, and conducted interviews with 24 farmers to investigate their motivations to carry out the management. We found a positive influence of active management on the semi-open structure of wood-pastures. Financial support was vital for management, but personal values related to tradition also played an important role. The interviewees differed widely in their range of motivations, suggesting that other strategies in addition to financial incentives would further improve the management of wood-pastures in the region.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0719-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Reasons for implementing ISO 14001 in Malaysia

Environmental management systems (EMS) have been introduced globally to reduce environmental degradation issues brought about by industrial development. The research discussed in this paper is aimed at identifying the benefits and motivations of the implementation of EMS in compliance with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 standard in Malaysian industries by using the pairwise comparison method. Experts in EMS from the Scientific and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia were invited to participate in the research panel. Based on the experts’ input, data analysis was carried out by using multi‐criteria pairwise comparisons. The findings showed the ranked benefits and motivations of the implementation of the ISO 14001 standard for businesses. The results can indicate to policy‐makers and business advisors how businesses can be encouraged to implement the ISO 14001.     

Greener growing: assessing the influence of gardening practices on the ecological viability of community gardens in South East Queensland,Australia

While claims about the environmental benefits of community gardens abound, few researchers have systematically assessed the ecological integrity of gardening practices. This study investigated gardening practices in 50 community gardens in Brisbane and Gold Coast cities, Australia. The study aimed to better understand how gardening practices might affect the ecological viability of community gardens. Factors investigated included: garden bio-physical characteristics, operators’ motivations, gardeners’ socio-demographic backgrounds, garden facilities and types of plants grown. Two broad types of gardens were identified: permaculture (21 gardens) and non-permaculture (29 gardens). Permaculture gardens used lower-impact gardening practices. Findings have policy implications for environmental planning and management.     

女性旅游者行为特征分析及其动机研究——以西递、宏村为例

利用SPSS社科统计软件对2005年西递、宏村调查数据进行交互分析和主成分分析，得出女性旅游者客源地结构特征、人口统计学特征、决策行为模式、出游动机等一般规律，最后比较分析了我国与美国高学历女性出游动机的异同，试图为国内外女性旅游市场开发和营销人员提供有价值的参考。     

Evaluating the influence of nature connection and values on conservation attitudes at a tropical deforestation frontier

Inner phenomena, such as personal motivations for pursuing sustainability, may be critical levers for improving conservation outcomes. Most conservation research and policies, however, focus on external phenomena (e.g., ecological change or economic processes). We explored the factors shaping 9 conservation attitudes toward forest and wildlife protection among colonist farmers around an Amazonian deforestation frontier. Our data comprised 241 face-to-face quantitative surveys, complemented with qualitative insights from open-ended questionnaire responses and opportunistic semistructured interviews. To account for the full spectrum of possible inner motivations, we employed measures of nature connection (indicating biospheric motivation) and personal values organized around the traditionalism (traditionalist through to high openness to change) and universalism dimensions (egoistic through to altruistic motivations). We used averaged beta-binomial generalized linear models to assess the role of external factors (socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and environmental) and personal (inner) motivations on the variation in attitudes. Each attitude was modeled separately. The relative importance of each predictor was judged by the proportion of models where it appeared as significant. Proconservation views were expressed by the majority (at least 65%) of the respondents in 7 out of the 9 attitude models. The most consistent predictors were emotional nature connection and personal values (significant in 4–6 out of 9 models), rather than external phenomena (significant in 0–5 models). However, the poorest farmers had lower scores on the agreement with prioritizing nature over development (𝛽 = –0.52, 95% CI: –0.96 to –0.07). Qualitative data also indicated that economic barriers hinder forest conservation on farms. These results suggest that biospheric, traditionalistic, and altruistic motivations promote people's proconservation attitudes, but nurturing these latent motivations is unlikely to improve conservation outcomes if material poverty remains unaddressed. Integrating the inner–outer perspective into conservation thinking and practical interventions could foster environmental stewardship and increase human well-being.     

Practical Implications of Understanding the Influence of Motivations on Commitment to Voluntary Urban Conservation Stewardship

Although the word commitment is prevalent in conservation biology literature and despite the importance of people's commitment to the success of conservation initiatives, commitment as a psychological phenomenon and its operation in specific conservation behaviors remains unexplored. Despite increasing calls for conservation psychology to play a greater role in meeting conservation goals, applications of the psychological sciences to specific conservation behaviors, illustrating their utility to conservation practice, are rare. We examined conservation volunteers’ motivations and commitment to urban conservation volunteering. We interviewed key informant volunteers and used interview findings to develop psychometric scales that we used to assess motivations and commitment to volunteer. We surveyed 322 urban conservation volunteers and used factor analysis to reveal how volunteers structure their motivations and commitment to volunteer for urban conservation activities. Six categories of motivations and 2 categories of commitment emerged from factor analysis. Volunteers were motivated by desires to help the environment, defend and enhance the ego, career and learning opportunities, escape and exercise, social interactions, and community building. Two forms of commitment, affective and normative commitment, psychologically bind people to urban conservation volunteerism. We used linear‐regression models to examine how these categories of motivations influence volunteers’ commitment to conservation volunteerism. Volunteers’ tendency to continue to volunteer for urban conservation, even in the face of fluctuating counter urges, was motivated by personal, social, and community functions more than environmental motivations. The environment, otherwise marginally important, was a significant motivator of volunteers’ commitment only when volunteering met volunteers’ personal, social, and community‐building goals. Attention to these personal, social, and community‐building motivations may help enhance volunteers’ commitment to conservation stewardship and address the pressing challenge of retaining urban conservation volunteers. Implicaciones Prácticas del Entendimiento de la Influencia de Motivaciones sobre el Compromiso de Voluntarios de Conservación Urbana Asah & Blahna     

The role of the individual administrator in famine relief: Three case studies

A series of hypotheses on the role of the individual administrator in famine relief are proposed and three are examined with respect to case studies of famines in India (1896 and 1906–1907), Uganda (1908) and Lombok (1940). While the evidence is not conclusive, the focus upon the role of the individual administrator offers additional insights into the compexities of official response to famines.     

Understanding consumer behaviour and adaptation planning responses to climate-driven environmental change in Canada's parks and protected areas: a climate futurescapes approach

Parks and protected areas are a global ecological, social and health resource visited by over 8 billion people annually. Their use can yield substantial benefits, but only if a balance between ecological integrity and sustainable visitation is struck. This research explores the potential influence of climate-driven environmental change on visitation to North America's most popular glacier, the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada. Photorealistic environmental visualizations were used to gauge visitors’ perceptions of environmental change and potential impacts on consumer behaviour. Results suggest that impacts could substantially diminish the site's pull as a tourism destination. Rather than improving visitation prospects, expert-proposed adaptations underestimated the importance of perceived naturalness and contributed to further potential decline. Findings are relevant to protected areas planning and management. They suggest that a natural path to climate change adaptation is the best way to support both ecological integrity and the long-term tourism pull of protected areas.     

Linking ecosystem services and human‐values theory

Understanding why people make the decisions they do remains a fundamental challenge facing conservation science. Ecosystem service (ES) (a benefit people derive from an ecosystem) approaches to conservation reflect efforts to anticipate people's preferences and influence their environmental behavior. Yet, the design of ES approaches seldom includes psychological theories of human behavior. We sought to alleviate this omission by applying a psychological theory of human values to a cross‐cultural ES assessment. We used interviews and focus groups with fish workers from 28 coral reef fishing communities in 4 countries to qualitatively identify the motivations (i.e., human values) underlying preferences for ES; quantitatively evaluate resource user ES priorities; and identify common patterns among ES motivations and ES priorities (i.e., trade‐offs and synergies). Three key findings are evident that align with human values theory. First, motivations underlying preferences for individual ESs reflected multiple human values within the same value domain (e.g., self‐enhancement). Second, when averaged at community or country scales, the order of ES priorities was consistent. However, the order belied significant variation that existed among individuals. Third, in line with human values theory, ESs related to one another in a consistent pattern; certain service pairs reflected trade‐off relationships (e.g., supporting and provisioning), whereas other service pairs reflected synergistic relationships (e.g., supporting and regulating). Together, these findings help improve understanding of when and why convergence and trade‐offs in people's preferences for ESs occur, and this knowledge can inform the development of suitable conservation actions.     

Community gardening and social cohesion: different designs,different motivations

Community gardens vary in several ways: they are cultivated by different kinds of communities in various locations, entail individual or communal plots and the extent of active participation (e.g. gardening) differs. In this paper, we study seven community gardens with varying organisational designs and objectives, and investigate the extent to which these influence the enhancement of social cohesion. We also take into account to what extent differences in motivation among community gardeners matter. Despite these differences in motivation, however, we find that in all of the cases studied, people talk to and get to know others, and mutual help is widespread. We, therefore, conclude that community gardens contribute to the development of social cohesion – even if people are not particularly driven by social motivations. Moreover, while participants who are motivated by the social aspects of gardening naturally show a higher level of appreciation for them, these social aspects also bring added value for those participants who are motivated primarily by growing vegetables.