The “IAS Management Attitude” scale: a tool for measuring consensus between experts and practitioners in invasion biology

Abstract

Quantifying attitudes towards invasive alien species (IAS) is fundamental to understanding the extent to which conservation scientists agree and can collaborate in their management. We tested the IAS Management Attitude scale (IMA), a shortened version of the Pest Management Attitude Scale, originally invented to quantify attitudes towards pests in New Zealand, as a tool to quantify broader attitudes towards IAS among bioinvasion experts in Italy. We administered an online questionnaire to a sample of experts working on biological invasions in Italy. We collected 316 answers, both from conservation practitioners (26.6%) and researchers (73.4%), and we used structural equation modeling to test for the psychometric properties of the scale and compare attitude scores between groups. The scale showed both a good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.7), validity (CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.99, SRMR = 0.03, RMSE = 0.02) and measurement invariance, when comparing researchers and practitioners, as well as when comparing respondents working on different invasive taxa. Both researchers and practitioners, as well as respondents of a different age, had similar attitudes about IAS and their management. Our study shows that this shortened version of PMA scale, a simple scale originally conceived to measure attitudes towards invasive alien mammals, could indeed be used to quantify the attitudes of experts towards IAS, even in countries where the public debate about biological invasions is much more recent than in New Zealand. The scale could potentially be used both for large-scale and long-term research about the attitudes of experts about IAS.