Stories about Wildlife: Developing an Instrument for Identifying Wildlife Value Orientations Cross-Culturally

Abstract

The need for cross-cultural research to better understand the relationships between humans and wildlife was one of the driving factors in the instigation of the Wildlife Values Globally project. A fundamental challenge in fulfilling this need is developing appropriate methods that can elicit thoughts about wildlife from people in a variety of cultures. As such, a key goal of this project was to develop a basic cross-cultural instrument that would reveal wildlife value orientations (WVOs). A semi-structured interview instrument was developed using emotional prompts to elicit stories about wildlife. This instrument was tested in the United States and the results were compared to those of a previously developed quantitative survey of WVOs. The interview instrument was successful in revealing WVOs comparable to those identified by the survey instrument and was deemed promising for use cross-culturally.

Keywords:

• wildlife value orientations
• cross-cultural methods
• emotions