Investigating societal attitudes toward marine ecosystem restoration

Abstract

Globally, direct and indirect human impacts have led to the widespread degradation of marine ecosystems. The resulting loss of habitat and marine biodiversity has led to the increased impetus for marine ecosystem restoration at a policy level. The success of such programs relies on an understanding of the nature of public support for marine restoration. This article examines such support through a survey of the attitudes of the general public in Norway and Italy. The results show that among both populations, there is broad support for restoration despite a lack of awareness of marine restoration activity. Differences in responses to the attitudinal questions across countries were tested using standard statistical independence tests and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Results show significant differences between samples in attitudes toward the completion of restoration and attitudes toward how restoration should be funded. Examining within‐group variation, for both samples, regression analysis indicates that a mixture of socioeconomic and context‐specific variables are significant predictors of awareness and attitudes toward restoration, while environmental awareness is a positive and significant indicator of attitude toward restoration.