Project properties
Title Human emotions towards wildlife
Group Cultural Geography Group
Project type thesis
Credits 36 (MSc)
Supervisor(s) Maarten Jacobs
Examiner(s) Prof. dr Edward Huijbens
Contact info GEO thesis contact person Chih-Chen Trista Lin: chihchentrista.lin@wur.nl
Begin date 2020/01/01
End date 2022/12/31
Description For various reasons, wildlife raises continuous concerns in society. Many people are interested in wildlife. This interest triggers various types of tourist behaviours, such as safari tourism and whale watching tourism. Wildlife watching is also the most important motive amongst Western people to visit a national park. Wildlife also presents economic concerns such as agricultural damage or revenues from wildlife based tourist industry. Wildlife is relevant to human health and safety, for instance through attacks or zoonotic diseases. And wildlife is important to those who appraise ecosystem integrity.
Emotion is a root cause of human-wildlife relationships. Positive emotions such as joy are crucial for the attraction wildlife presents to humans. And negative emotions such as fear drive many worries and human-wildlife conflicts. Understanding human emotions towards wildlife, then, is a promising avenue to understand the myriad of human-wildlife relationships. This type of knowledge is needed in for instance conservation policy and management or tourism development.
Surprisingly little is known about human emotions towards wildlife. Which emotions do which people feel towards which animals? This broad question allows for a variety of research designs, qualitative and quantitative, as well as contexts, segments of people, and species of wildlife. Similarly, the question how we can explain human emotions towards wildlife (e.g. what mechanisms play a role) merits attention. In addition, the questions what these emotions do, think of explaining conservation support or tourism behaviour, merits attention.
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