Finding Lake Huron's Stewards: A Transferable Model for Conservation Communication Campaigns

摘要

Campaigns designed to foster stewardship have been executed with some success; however, a disproportionate number of examples come from urban, affluent communities. Using a case study in northeast Michigan, I created a transferable conservation campaign model that helps practitioners perform elements of successful campaign design by providing considerations for both urban and rural audiences based on capacity, culture, and land use. I interviewed 30 participants from three groups---natural resource managers, communication practitioners, and citizen stakeholders---to investigate stewardship motivation and whether differences between urban and rural communities impact the transferability of conservation campaigns. I found that differences in capacity (financial and human resources) and land use and culture between urban and rural communities strongly affect motivations for stewardship and should inform conservation campaign design. For example, interviewees said the way people use and relate to natural resources affects their value of conservation (56.7%) and recommended framing conservation messaging around the audience's interests (50.0%). However, interviewees also said urban and rural communities use and relate to natural resources in different ways (70.0%) and that rural connection with natural resources is often based on economics and livelihood, while urban residents connect on a social or recreational level (40.0%). These and other findings helped inform the conservation campaign model I created, with the objectives of (1) incorporating a broad spectrum of community capacities and cultures; and (2) supplementing current campaign models to increase efficacy and transferability. This preliminary work suggests future research that could involve fitting this model with data.