Public sea turtle watches serve as effective environmental education

Abstract

To understand both immediate and longer-term effects of a short duration, interpretive wildlife tourism program, we studied responses from participants in a sea turtle watch program. This program comprised an interpretive presentation followed by an opportunity to view a nesting loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta). We conducted 37 programs in 2013 and 2014, for 843 participants, of whom 70.5% were able to see a nesting turtle. We measured participant attitudes, knowledge, intention to act, and long-term behavior change. Initial participant responses indicated prior interest in nature and environmental topics, and a knowledge base focused on biological sea turtle information. After the interpretive presentation, participants chose to provide conservation-related information as opposed to natural history-related information. Intention to engage in conservation behaviors was high following the turtle watch experience, regardless of whether a turtle was seen. The conservation value of our turtle watch program is expressed through conservation-focused knowledge acquisition by participants and their high post-program intention to engage in behaviors benefiting sea turtles, both of which precede long-term behavior change in an interdisciplinary model of behavior change.

Keywords:

• Conservation
• environmental interpretation
• behavior change
• evaluation
• informal education

Acknowledgements

We thank the dedicated members of Disney's Animals, Science and Environment sea turtle watch team: Morgan Young, Kaitlin O’Toole, Jerry Brown, Chase Pickering, Rob Carlson, Mackenzie Pearson, Matt Fetherston, Barbie Martz, Tammy Kaleel, Mike Lebanik, Mike Taylor, Lindsay Sihau, Michelle Matuszewski, Donna Perez, Megan Cohn, Laura Bray, Courtney Dalton, Caitlin Cox, Joe Christman, Tom Dillenbeck, Kim Negoro, Jay Yohn, Jeanne DeGrandis, Kim Mott, Nicole Luecker, and Angela Vasconcellos. We greatly appreciate the team of Cast Members at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort for their support of ASE sea turtle programs. This manuscript benefitted from thoughtful reviews by Harriet Smith, Katie Feilen, and Andrew Smith. We also thank the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for providing our permit (Marine Turtle Permit 071) to conduct public sea turtle watches.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.