Direct experience and attitude change towards bears and wolves
Open accessAbstract
Understanding how changes in the sizes of large carnivore populations affect the attitudes of the public is vital in order to mitigate social conflicts over large carnivore management issues. Using data from two Swedish postal surveys in 2004 and 2009, we examined the probable social effects of a continued increase in the Swedish populations of bear and wolf by comparing levels of direct experience of bears and wolves with public attitudes towards these animals. We report an increase in direct experience of bears and wolves, lower levels of acceptance of the existence of these animals, and a lower degree of support for the policy goals of both species in 2009 compared to 2004. We also find that these changes are more prominent in areas with local carnivore populations than in other areas of Sweden. Our results imply that attitudes towards bears and wolves are likely to become more negative as populations continue to grow. The uneven distributions of the carnivore populations are likely to generate more frequent social conflicts in the future as they could cause an increase in the attitudinal divide between those members of the Swedish public who have had direct experiences of carnivores and those who have not.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Perceptions of large carnivores can rapidly change as a function of population size.
“Similarly, perceptions of large carnivores, which often encompass both admiration and fear, can rapidly change as a function of population size (Zimmermann et al., 2001;Treves et al., 2013;Eriksson et al., 2015).”
From Of Rarity and Symbolism: Understanding Human Perceptions of Charismatic Color Morphs (2024) · cites this paper as Eriksson et al., 2015
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 50 · Cited by 144
Research works printed but not linked: 6
- Ajzen, I. 1989. Attitude structure and behavior. -In: Pratkanis, R. A. (ed.), Attitude structure and function. Psychology Press, pp. 241 -274.
- Dillman, D. et al. 2009. Internet, mail, and mixed-mode surveys: the tailored design method. -Wiley.
- Eagly, A.H. and Chaiken, S. 1998. Attitude structure and function. -In: Gilbert, D. T. et al. (eds), Th e handbook of social psychology, Vol. 1 and 2. McGraw-Hill, pp. 269 -322.
- Fazio, R. H. 1995. Attitudes as object-evaluation associations: deter- minants, consequences, and correlates of attitude accessibility. -In: Petty, R. E. and Krosnick, J. A. (eds), Attitude strength: antecedents and consequences. Erlbaum, pp. 247 -282. activism: an example of the forest sector. -J. Environ. Psychol. 23: 79 -87.
- Heberlein, T. A. 2012. Navigating environmental attitudes. -Oxford Univ. Press.
- Liberg, O. 2010. Intensive monitoring in Scandinavia. -In: Wolves, people and territories. Workshop. Museo Regionali di Scienzi Naturali, Regione Piemonte, Torino, Italy, pp. 20 -21.
- Authors
- Eriksson, M., Sandström, C., & Ericsson, G.
- Affiliations
- Umeå University (SE)
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SE)
- Venue
- Wildlife Biology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2015-05
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 131-137
- ISSN
- 0909-6396 (ISSN-L)
- 1903-220X
- OpenAlex
- W1690393064
- Cited by
- 144
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 52 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 5.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Wildlife Biology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- BioOne Complete (BioOne) (submittedVersion)
- DiVA at Umeå University (Umeå University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Animal and Plant Science Education
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Rangeland and Wildlife Management
- Keywords
- bears, wolf, direct experience, attitude change, human-wildlife conflict, Sweden
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
