Profile of the interviewee

Because of the small sample of interviewees and the general nature of our discussions, I cannot make inferences about learners across sites using the interviews. However, I do see overarching themes universal to learners across all three sites. General beliefs include a

sentiment of stewardship, an animal’s right to a decent life, a concern for ecological crisis, and the belief in ecological interdependence; these arose in some form during almost all interviews. While few interviewees self-identify as environmental professionals or activists, broad

environmental support exists across all three sites. While this result may have in part been driven by respondent self-selection, I also saw a sufficient amount of environmental apathy to suggest that not all participants were motivated to present an identity of an environmentally minded individual. While my inquiring about VBN during interviews might make learners appear more environmentally focused than they are in other contexts, our discussions still reflect some level of ascription to an ecological worldview; the general U.S. population has been moving toward the New Ecological Paradigm for 40 years (Dunlap 2008), and the audiences in these contexts are more environmentally conscious than the average American (Falk et al. 2009).

Most importantly, these pro-environmental themes were present in interviews with learners across the political spectrum, suggesting that individuals of different political

backgrounds might agree more on environmental issues in an animal-themed context than they would in a more general environmental context. Everyone, even the most hardcore utilitarian,

saw the need for humankind to treat animals with respect and manage them sustainably. Animal welfare thus represents fertile grounds for developing connections across political divides regarding environmental values, beliefs, and norms. As learning about other environmental topics (such as climate change) have had a polarizing effect on the US population (Kahan et al. 2012), finding places where people with diverse views can learn about environmental topics in a shared space could be a critical way to bridge political gaps in environmental decision-making.

The moral status of animals represents a rich source of contemplation among visitors at all three sites. Previous work has shown that the relationship between animal welfare attitudes, animal activism, and vegetarianism are complex. In a study by Herzog and Golden (2009), half of the animal activists ate meat and half of the vegetarians were not animal activists, suggesting that the decision to become an activist or a vegetarian might be driven by other personal

characteristics (in their study, they suggest visceral disgust as a potential driver). In my study, the Animal Attitudes Scale served as the metric for animal welfare, and I found that it was tightly correlated with NEP, suggesting that general ecological worldview is related to an animal

welfare perspective. I also found that visitors at CTR had higher scores than NCA visitors, which also suggests that the welfare-focused mission of CTR might attract participants with a greater sensitivity to animal welfare issues.

Additionally, my interviewees expressed some apprehension about captivity in the zoo and/or aquarium context, again suggesting that context matters deeply. Interviewees viewed captivity as a grey area in which individual facilities are evaluated based on their animal care policies. This finding goes against previous AZA-sponsored research showing the public does not support critiques of zoos because of captivity concerns (Fraser et al. 2009), so this issue with captivity warrants further attention. If these specialty facilities are able to attract people who

believe zoos are unacceptable, this represents a whole different subset of the population that might be eager to learn about animals but not eager to support zoos. And while my data suggest that NCA visitors might also represent some portion of the population that is uncomfortable with zoos, more research is needed comparing zoos to aquariums; the literature tends to lump these two types of facilities together (i.e. Miller et al. 2004). This distinction is also critical to my analysis because at CTR and DLC, the concerned visitor only wants to see charismatic mammals under acceptable conditions, whereas at NCA the visitor is saying that they do not have a

problem with seeing aquatic animals in these conditions, but they might not be comfortable seeing terrestrial animals in similar conditions. Thus, the educator’s task is different in each place: DLC and CTR educators must convince the learner that the organization is doing good work, and NCA educators must convince the visitor that aquatic animals need as much care and consideration as terrestrial animals need.

The religious theme that emerged during my interviews has also been identified in the literature as a driving force in environmental beliefs. Fraser and colleagues (2009) interviewed religious leaders and identified religious narratives about nature as God’s creation and the

importance of stewardship. NEP research done in North Carolina found that the man over nature dimension was unique within the NEP scale because of its religious/hierarchical nature (Nooney et al. 2003). While I did not test for dimensionality in my survey data, interview data suggest that spiritual influences may play a large role in shaping environmental beliefs in audiences in this region. In particular, the Christian construct of human dominion over nature may play a critical role in shaping the environmental stewardship ethic in these audiences. More research would be needed in which religious data were collected on the survey in addition to the VBN metrics.