The effect of engagement in private lands research on landowner conservation knowledge, attitudes, awareness, and behavioral intentions

ABSTRACT

Landowners and scientists often interact during conservation research projects on private lands, creating the opportunity for impactful outreach efforts. However, this potential has received little attention in the literature. This is particularly true for situations where landowners interact with researchers, but do not actively participate in data collection (a “traditional research” model that contrasts to participatory science projects). In this paper, we explore and compare the effects that engaging landowners in traditional versus participatory science research has on landowner conservation knowledge, attitudes, awareness, and behavioral intentions. We find similar effects across both treatment groups, with involvement leading to greater knowledge, increased awareness, more positive attitudes, and/or more behavioral intentions regarding conservation among participants. However, landowners reported limited tangible behavior change during our study. Our results suggest that engaging with landowners during private lands research may be valuable to conservation, but further research is needed on how to optimize these interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Behavioral intentions
• citizen science
• conservation behavior
• hellbender
• participatory science
• private property

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the landowners who participated in this research project. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a fellowship from the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies provided financial support for this work. We appreciate feedback from Marc Stern and Paul Angermeier as well as assistance from J.D. Kleopfer, M. Pinder, and B. Beaty. J. Groffen, H. Davie, S. Beers, M. Lee, A, Klewicki and E. Bennick assisted with data collection. S. Livingston assisted with figures. Our research was reviewed and approved by the Virginia Tech Institutional Review Board (IRB #18-444 and 19-564).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation [0407.17.058676]; National Science Foundation [IOS-17555055]; Global Change Center Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies [2017-2020-VTECH]; Virginia Dept of Wildlife Resources [EP2443089].