Harnessing visual media in environmental education: increasing knowledge of orangutan conservation issues and facilitating sustainable behaviour through video presentations

Abstract

Many animals are currently facing extinction. Conservation education which highlights the impacts of our behaviour on other species survival is crucial. This study provides evidence for the use of visual media to increase knowledge, attitudes and conservation behaviours regarding the highly endangered orangutan. University students (n = 126) were shown two styles of educational presentation (knowledge-based, emotive), representative of material widely available through the internet. Participants were randomly assigned to groups, with presentation order counterbalanced. A repeated measures between groups ANCOVA revealed significant increases in knowledge about orangutans over time (p < 0.001), with a significant main effect of group condition (p < 0.001). An interaction between time and condition was also observed (p < 0.001). For participant attitudes toward orangutans, only a significant main effect of time was detected (p = 0.001). Regardless of presentation order, maximum increases occurred with the cumulative effect of both presentations. Behavioural data suggests knowledge and attitude changes translated into actual, at least short term, behaviour change, with 84.8% of participants who returned a behaviour diary (36.5% return rate) reporting changing their behaviour in the week following the study. The potential wide-ranging application of such forms of media to spread environmental messages and foster more sustainable behaviour is discussed.

Keywords:

• new media
• environmental education
• orangutan conservation

Notes

1. McKenzie-Mohr (2000) advocates the best approach is to identify potential behavioural barriers prior to the implementation of a behavioural encouragement strategy. However, in practice, these may unfold simultaneously as early participants in the intervention draw focus to various barriers that prevent their personal behaviour change. Regardless of timing, identification of these barriers is a crucial step to ensure the likelihood of behaviour change is maximised each time an initiative is subsequently conducted. Due to the preliminary nature of the current research, the latter approach was utilised to identify barriers to supporting orangutan conservation and to allow strategies for barrier reduction to be devised as a foundation for further research.

2. This scale has high internal validity (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.83) and has been utilised across a broad range of samples.

3. The AAS is one of the most widely utilised measures of attitudes toward the treatment of animals within the discipline of anthrozoology, with high internal consistency and suitability to broad populations (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.86; Signal and Taylor 2006). One limitation of the AAS however, is that it is unable to discriminate differences in attitudes towards different species and reported attitudes may be most reflective of feelings toward domestic species and pets rather than wild animals (Taylor and Signal 2009).

4. Five items on the scale were negatively worded. These were recoded prior to analysis so a higher overall score indicated higher attitudes toward orangutans.

5. Instead of measuring participants’ subjective norm of wider society, friends and family were prioritised as being the people likely to exert the most direct social influence on the participants. Terry, Hogg, and McKimmie (2000) suggest this will yield higher predictive validity and relation to behaviour within the theory of planned behaviour framework than a broader measure.

6. This included a response box for the following seven days and asked participants to record their engagement in any of the conservation behaviours they reported an intention to change, as well as the time they spent on these activities (i.e. checking shopping products for palm oil or educating others). For those who did not nominate a behaviour they would like to change, this concluded their participation in the research.

7. Covariates were gender, age, being a vegetarian, pet ownership, zoo membership, and scores on the NEP. Visiting a zoo in the prior 12 months and considering pets as family members were excluded to avoid multi-collinearity. Where appropriate, sphericity was controlled by Huynh-Feldt correction, however uncorrected degrees of freedom are reported.