Abstract
AbstractConservation practice requires an understanding of complex social‐ecological processes of a system and the different meanings and values that people attach to them. Mental models research offers a suite of methods that can be used to reveal these understandings and how they might affect conservation outcomes. Mental models are representations in people's minds of how parts of the world work. We seek to demonstrate their value to conservation and assist practitioners and researchers in navigating the choices of methods available to elicit them. We begin by explaining some of the dominant applications of mental models in conservation: revealing individual assumptions about a system, developing a stakeholder‐based model of the system, and creating a shared pathway to conservation. We then provide a framework to “walk through” the stepwise decisions in mental models research, with a focus on diagram‐based methods. Finally, we discuss some of the limitations of mental models research and application that are important to consider. This work extends the use of mental models research in improving our ability to understand social‐ecological systems, creating a powerful set of tools to inform and shape conservation initiatives.
Highlights
Conservation is an action-oriented field focused on reimagining the future as “a world where people understand, value, and conserve the diversity of life on Earth” (SCB, 2016)
We explore each of these main applications in turn, with specific reference to diagram-based methods
We focus on diagram-based methods because they enable abstraction, a process that allows the complexity of a system to be reduced to an appropriate level of simplicity by focusing on only the most relevant aspects, to which layers of complexity can be added (Anderson, Meyer, & Olivier 2002)
Summary
Conservation is an action-oriented field focused on reimagining the future as “a world where people understand, value, and conserve the diversity of life on Earth” (SCB, 2016). Mental models research offers a useful set of methods to elicit and share complex knowledge structures and reveal assumptions that influence support for when, why, and how species and ecosystems should be conserved (e.g., Game, Meijaard, Sheil, & McDonald-Madden, 2014). A mental model exists in someone's mind as a small-scale model of how (a part of) the world works When elicited, they represent how individuals structure and organize concepts cognitively, revealing understandings of dynamic and. The first section explores some of the dominant applications, and value of mental models for conservation research and practice. The second section provides a “walk through” of the stepwise decisions that can be useful when engaging in mental models research, with a focus on diagram-based methods. The third section discusses some of the limitations of mental models research and application
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