Development of a measuring instrument to monitor the biodiversity awareness of the German population

Abstract

Current biodiversity loss highlight the need for action towards nature and biodiversity protection. We report the revision of the nature awareness instrument used by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation for monitoring the biodiversity awareness of the German population every two years. In the revision process, an iterative interdisciplinary behavior prioritization approach was used to identify behavioral intentions with a high impact on biodiversity protection. The revised monitoring tool comprises two parts: the first part consists of a concise 16-item measure covering three subtypes of nature conservation behavioral intentions that can be performed by citizens. The second part consists of 33 items assessing six constructs of an extended theory of behavior model as predictors of the nature conservation behavioral intentions: attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, awareness of negative consequences, social identity and connection to nature as additional. Two representative national samples (N = 1.075; N = 2.410) were used to test the measurement and structural models. The empirical evidence supports the reliability of the developed construct measures as well as their theoretically postulated relationships. Implications for stakeholder, study limitations and requirements for future research are discussed.