Characterizing Interpersonal Influence for Grassland Conservation Behaviours in a Unique Population

ABSTRACT

Interpersonal communication can influence the decisions people make about engaging in conservation behaviours. In-depth interviews with Tibetan pastoralists serve as the basis for examining interpersonal communication patterns and sources of interpersonal influence about grassland conservation behaviours. Herding and family groups are key collectives; salient sources of information vary across types of information. Salient individuals are those with credibility and means control: community leaders, elders, veterinarians, and government officials. Explicit information about conservation comes from religious leaders. The findings have significant implications for understanding the function and nature of interpersonal influence in unique population groups regarding conservation actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation
• interpersonal influence
• social norms
• unique populations
• Tibetan pastoralists

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Lu Zhi, Ariane Leclerq, Ed Glazer, and the team of interviewers and coders for their assistance with this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The research team included between 15 and 20 total people over the course of the project including undergraduate and graduate students, professional interviewers, NGO staff, translators, transcribers, and research faculty.

2 Males were identified by cultural insiders and local leaders as decision-makers about the study topic. Field observations indicate women play a significant role in the actual herding of animals and were identified during the interview process as influential family members.

3 The US team was present for pilot interviews and worked with the NGO investigators to conduct quality checks remotely during the course of the final interviews. US team members were not present for the final interviews because of the length of time necessary to conduct the interviews.

4 Krippendorff’s alpha coefficient is a statistical measure of the agreement achieved between coders when coding textual units. It is widely used in calculating intercoder reliability in content analysis due to its ability in handling missing data, various sample sizes, categories, numbers of coders, and any measurement level of the data.

5 All the discrepancies between the two coders in the first two coding sessions were discussed and resolved among them, resulting in 100% agreement.

6 The question about giving advice was not included in the network analysis due to the substantial data missing from the interviews, which indicated the reticence of people to admit that they “gave advice” to anyone.

7 As one of the basic metrics of the network, the average degree is known as the mean value of the degrees for all nodes in a network. It has limited meaning in this case because we do not have data from the entire network.

8 A related concept of samsara, the repeating cycle of life and death for all living things, is also commonly discussed in the Tibetan context and has relevance for consumption of animals and profiting from the sale of animal products. Further, protection of the grassland and wild animals is a mechanism for gaining merit to improve samsara (Personal communication, Anonymous, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This project would not have been possible without a grant from the Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project at Michigan State University [# 2011001]. Partial support was provided by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project numbers [MICL02244, MICL02173, and MICL02362], and by National Science Foundation Award [#SMA-1328503].