FIDELIO Project news

Our new paper led by James McGinlay has just been published! In this paper we explore determinants of stated and active support for protected areas. Our results show that stated support is linked with pro-environmental behaviour when using the protected area, indicating the importance of supportive public attitudes for behaviour that is supportive of ecological effectiveness. The link between stated support and volunteering was less clear indicating that this is also influenced by other factors. Our proposed model is intended to inform theoretical understanding of the factors affecting public support, but also as a step towards developing a predictive tool for practitioners taking into consideration a broader range of factors in assessing public support and highlighting problem areas for action.

We are very excited to have completed our survey at Triglav National Park with the support of our local collaborator Matjaz Hribar. Over 300 local residents took the time to fill in our online survey after invitation. We will now start processing the data and we expect to have a report soon published on our website.

In this paper, we reviewed theoretical and empirical evidence explaining the level of support for protected areas and proposed a new approach when designing and designating protected areas in Europe. This approach models the process of the introduction of a new protected area as a policy intervention within a socio-ecological system. Specifically, it models how protected area social outcomes or impacts are conditioned and contextualised by numerous intervening factors relating to the social context and governance and management system to influence local actors’ attitude and active support for the protected area. This new approach aims to assist policy makers, conservation practitioners and scientists to plan actions that assist in increasing the level of public support for protected areas in the context of the post 2020 Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union. The full article is available here: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/5/733