Decision biases and environmental attitudes among conservation professionals

The importance of human behavior in biodiversity conservation is widely recognized, but there little published evidence about how professionals make decisions when values are at stake. We take a behavioral economics approach, administering simplified decision problems (“choice experiments”), questions choice-relevant preferences and views (“elicitation questions”), psychometric scale (the New Ecological Paradigm scale) to difficult-to-recruit sample (n = 100) Canadian involved managing Rangifer tarandus caribou (Woodland Caribou). Our choice experiments reveal the several biases (risk aversion, commission bias, bias towards fairness) this influential group stakeholders. then examine in-sample differences between categories professional affiliation (e.g., resource industry, environmental nongovernmental organization, or federal/provincial government), finding significant variation responses one elicitation question (reference points) scores. discuss implications our findings for practice multistakeholder policy. Comparing prior work on under uncertainty nonconservation contexts suggests possible replication problem applying science insights problems, pointing need systematic research program. Results from development testing with convenience university students presented comparison throughout study.