Social psychological bases for Stakeholder acceptance Capacity

Abstract

Wildlife managers often encounter stakeholder groups with differing beliefs about ideal population levels of wildlife and appropriate management actions toward wildlife. For example, hunters, farmers, foresters, and suburban homeowners often express different acceptance capacities for white‐tailed deer. Similarly, stakeholder groups often differ over managing Canada geese, black‐tailed prairie dogs, beaver, and other species. Understanding and responding to these different preferences is essential to the successful management of publicly owned wildlife. Researchers have examined beliefs about wildlife populations from perspectives including cultural carrying capacity, overabundance, risk perception, wildlife acceptance capacity, and normative beliefs. Each approach has contributed to our understanding of how beliefs about ideal wildlife population levels are based on a complex interaction among internal, psychological variables (values, beliefs); behavioral variables (occupation, past experience with wildlife); and situational specifics (wildlife species, abundance, management actions). A normative approach, based on social psychology's hierarchical model of human thought, can help explain and predict the determinants and consequences of stakeholder acceptance capacity. Research using the normative approach demonstrates how stakeholder acceptance capacity for wildlife populations and management actions can be influenced by psychological, behavioral, and situational variables. Additional investigation of stakeholder acceptance capacity and its determinants will allow for more confident generalization about stakeholder responses to different wildlife population levels and management actions, and will help identify conditions that are likely to generate intense conflict among stakeholder groups.