Public support for restoration: Does including ecosystem services as a goal engage a different set of values and attitudes than biodiversity protection alone?

the field of restoration ecology, the notion that habitat restoration can return to society at least some of the natural capital that was lost when an ecosystem was degraded has gained wide cur- rency [1–3]. Techniques to quantify and compare restoration’s impact on ecosystem services are now being used to set priorities [4, 5], evaluate projects [6, 7], or justify their expense [8, 9]. A driving force behind the adoption of the ecosystem services (ES) concept is the appeal of having an anthropocentric rationale for biological conservation, which may draw in new sup- port from stakeholders unmoved by ecocentric or ethical arguments about preventing extinc- tion or protecting untrammeled wilderness. Though the ES concept is undeniably controversial [10], proponents have argued that a “big-tent” or “pragmatic” approach to con- servation, one that promotes environmental protection for reasons of human wellbeing along- side biodiversity, will result in more support for conservation [11–13]. Empirical studies testing whether ES arguments actually expand support for conservation are scarce. A study of projects undertaken by The Nature Conservancy found that ES-focused projects attracted more than four times as much funding, and from a wider variety of finance tools and corporate partnerships, than projects that had solely biodiversity goals [14]. With respect to ecological restoration, Clewell and Aronson [15] singled out a pragmatic approach based on preserving natural capital and mitigating climate change as the “most compelling”

motivation for restoring ecosystems, and suggested that stakeholder appreciation of the eco- nomic benefits was necessary to generate broad public support for restoration. The emergence of this anthropocentric rationale, and the increasing need for substantial human intervention in ecosystems to create and improve habitat, raise important questions about what moves people to support ecological restoration. There is a large body of literature suggesting that pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors depend most strongly on “self- transcending” core values such as altruism and concern for the biosphere [16–20]; others have shown pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors to be negatively associated with materialism [21] and social dominance [22]. This paper examines whether pro-environmental actions can appeal to those whose value orientation is more “self-enhancing” or who hold more instru- mental or utilitarian views of nature [23] when ecosystem services are included alongside biodiversity. Stern and others have segmented the core human values relating to environmental concern into Biospheric (nature-oriented), Altruistic (society-oriented), and Egoistic (self-oriented) strands [16, 19, 24]. According to the Value Belief Norm theory of pro-environmental behav- ior, any value orientation could potentially be associated with a pro-environmental action [25]. A person might sign a petition opposing pollution in streams because of a desire to swim in clean rivers (Egoistic–conscious of personal costs and benefits), to avoid harm to others

(Altruistic–seeking to maximize social utility), or to keep nature pristine (Biospheric–account- ing for the intrinsic value of nature). Though pro-environmental behaviors are most com- monly associated with a Biospheric or Altruistic value orientation, we hypothesized that when restoration is framed with an anthropocentric rationale (such as ES provision), support for res- toration would align more strongly with an Egoistic orientation. We also investigated the role of environmental attitudes in structuring support for ecologi- cal restoration. According to cognitive hierarchy theory, people’s core values underlie their more malleable attitudes and beliefs, which in turn mediate the effect of their values on partic- ular behaviors [26, 27]. We elicited respondents’ attitudes about the relationship between humans and nature with the Environmental Attitudes Inventory [28]. The EAI clusters peo- ple’s attitudes and beliefs along axes of Utilization and Preservation, analogous to ecological economists’ conception of “use” and “non-use” value. The Preservation axis is characterized by responses indicating enjoyment of nature, belief that nature is fragile, and ecocentric moti- vations for conservation. The Utilization axis engages belief in human dominance of nature, PLOS ONE Values and attitudes towards biodiversity and ecosystem service goals of restoration PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245074 January 19, 2021 2 / 15 Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.