3 research outputs found
Caught between personal and collective values: biodiversity conservation in European decision-making
Individual decisionâmakers at different governance levels operate in social contexts, which means that they sometimes need to compromise their personal values. Yet, this dissonance is rarely the direct target of empirical analyses of environmental decisionâmaking. We undertake a Qâanalysis of decisionâmakers' personal perspectives and the perspectives they perceive to dominate in their decisionâmaking contexts. Our empirical analysis addresses biodiversity conservation, which has traditionally been justified with intrinsic valueâ and scienceâbased arguments. The arguments have recently been broadened with the concept of ecosystem services, highlighting human benefits and values. This evolving context is interesting because of the new rise of anthropocentric values, which can lead to decisionâmakers experiencing dissonance. Our analysis of interviews with 43 biodiversity conservation decisionâmakers from nine European countries reveals four personally held perspectives that highlight different, yet partly overlapping, values â intrinsic, human benefit, conservation and connection â as well as three perspectives perceived to dominate in decisionâmaking â utilitarian, insurance and knowledge values. The comparison of personally held and perceived dominant perspectives points to one major conflict: those decisionâmakers who personally associate with intrinsic values and perceive utilitarian values to dominate in decisionâmaking experience dissonance. By contrast, personally held human benefit values are accommodated well in decisionâmaking contexts and decisionâmakers who perceive insurance values to dominate experience the least conflict with personally held values. These findings demonstrate the potential of arguments stressing longâterm benefits for easing tension and conflicts in conservation decisionâmaking, and the usefulness of empirically testing of the coincidence of individual and social values.peerReviewe