THE STRUCTURAL BASIS OF INTER-INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN CONSERVATION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR WITH RELATION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITION: A COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION STUDY

Abstract

Even though non-governmental organizations, universities, and governments have been working harder to protect species over the last few decades, many threats still cause species to become less common or even go extinct. Increasing human demands on the planet's resources are a major cause of biodiversity loss; hence, it is important for conservation experts to study what motivates people to behave in certain ways. Social psychologists who are interested in how people make decisions know that mathematical theories have already been used to explain how people make decisions, but they also know that people are not financially rational and that their choices can be affected by things like their attitudes and how much pressure they feel to act in a certain way (personal factors). They examine the application of social-psychological theories of behaviour to the fields of sustainability and natural resource management. Several studies only examine broad attitudes about conservation rather than particular attitudes towards conservation-related behaviours, which limits their use in developing treatments to alter such behavioural patterns. Conservation-relevant behaviours can be better understood, and thus better interventions can be made to influence them, if the behaviour of interest is defined more narrowly and attitudes are investigated in the context of other social-psychological indicators of behaviour (such as consumer attitude, the appearance of facilitating factors, and moral obligation).