Background/Aims
The freshwater realm is one of the world’s most modified and exploited ecosystem types and continues to face a range of existing and emerging threats. Given the scale and associated cost of the restoration challenge facing freshwater environments, the implementation of effective institution-led monitoring, conservation and management actions requires public support. Institutions invest significant resources into public education campaigns in the belief that greater knowledge will increase support for conservation action. However, environmental social identities and values are often described as better predictors of behavioural intention and action.
In this study, we used a survey of freshwater fishers (N = 229) to examine three main behavioural drivers among recreational fishers that are broadly assumed to underpin their support for environmental action: knowledge, social identity and values.
Methods
Using a series of mixed-effect models, we first examined whether individual fisher characteristics such as demographics, the species they target or their social identity influence the strength and type of environmental values an individual holds. We then assessed how these individual fisher characteristics, in concert with a fisher’s environmental knowledge and values affected their support for different types of institutional conservation actions.
Results
We found that none of the characteristic variables, including social identity, strongly predicted differences in environmental values. Support for institutional environmental action was best predicted by a combination of knowledge, social identity and values as well as the fisher’s target species. Therefore, values are not predicted by demographics or social identity and may therefore be more inherent to an individual, however values do combine with social identity and environmental knowledge to predict support for environmental action.
Conclusions
Our findings challenge the view that social identity influences values, while also showing knowledge remains an important predictor of behaviour, even in the presence of social identity and values. We recommend that environmental managers use properly designed educational campaigns that target feelings about threats to the environment over only facts, while also appealing to environmental social identity and values, to maximise support for institutional environmental actions.