Message received? Quantifying the impact of informal conservation education on adults visiting UK zoos

Abstract

Humanity is growing ever more disconnected from wild places and wild creatures (Gadgil 1993, Nabhan and St. Antoine 1993; Nabhan and Trimble 1994, Pyle 1993, 2003, Balmford 1999, Kahn and Kellert 2002). Over 50% of people now live in towns and cities, and their numbers are rising by 160000 daily (World Resources Institute 2000). With this in mind the world’s zoos, with more than 600 million visitors each year (WAZA 2005), have enormous potential to educate and inspire the public about conservation. Much is made of this role, in both reviews and policy statements on the conservation significance of zoos (Tribe and Booth 2003, Miller et al. 2004, WAZA 2005). Yet there is evidence that some captive facilities pay only limited attention to conservation education (Dunlap and Kellert 1995, Evans 1997, Mazur and Clark 2000). Against this criticism, very few studies have so far attempted to quantify whether zoo visits change people’s conservation-related knowledge, attitudes, or behavior, or whether such impacts vary across zoos. Most assessment of educational impacts to date has instead been nonquantitative (for reviews, see Kellert and Dunlap 1989, Broad and Weiler 1998, Dierking et al. 2002; seeDiscussion for counter examples).Moreover,

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