The Anchoring Model as a Tool to Improve Visitors’ Perceptions of Zoos

ABSTRACT

Visitors' negative perceptions about the quality of life of animals exhibited in zoos has been of great importance to induce a positive transformation of these establishments in a number of countries. However, this is a slow process, commonly associated with an improvement in the general education of society. The present study aimed to investigate whether the anchoring model can play a role in rapidly changing people’s perceptions about the poor conditions of certain zoos. The anchoring model is a mentally created reference system that is based on experience and that can be used to judge or qualify objects, situations or conditions encountered in life. For the purpose of anchoring, a video footage of a zoo with good quality standards was used. The visitors of two bad zoos were divided into two groups: an experimental group that received the video stimulus, and a control group that did not receive it. A structured form was used for data collection. Watching the video of a higher quality zoo (the anchoring model) triggered negative responses in visitors with regard to the perception of both quality of life and stress behavior in animals. The negative perception, in turn, reduced the visitors’ willingness to contribute to conservation projects run by the two zoos. Contemporary zoos are expected to organize their spaces in order to provide positive welfare states for their animals, to contribute to research and conservation programs, as well as to help their visitors develop a positive perception on conservation. This study suggests that the phenomenon of anchoring, aided by modern mass media, provides a favorable environment for accelerating the needed quality improvements in zoos with poor standards of animal welfare.

KEYWORDS:

• Animal welfare
• heuristic
• human–animal interaction
• human cognition
• perception
• zoological garden

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments and suggestions. We thank Mr Alfred Groiss for the images kindly granted for the elaboration of the video used in this study. We also show our gratitude to Dr Christini Caselli for the help provided with the data analyses.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank the Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco (Pernambuco Science and Technology Foundation, FACEPE) for granting the scholarship to the researcher Sampaio MB.