Pluralistic valuation of nature: Mixed-methods research with communities around protected areas in Alaska

Understanding the diverse values of nature among different groups of people is crucial to advancing conservation on public lands. Knowledge from the social sciences must be leveraged to form equitable and just natural resource planning processes, and enhance protected area management for multiple forms of benefit and well-being. My dissertation engaged residents surrounding protected areas across Interior Alaska, U.S.A. to understand how they interacted with nature and made decisions for environmental policy and practice. In my first study, I uncovered ‘place meanings' through in-depth interviews and found that wildlife were integral to the various reasons why residents developed connections with places. In my second study, I drew from a regional household survey and showed that the values of communal cohesion among subsistence users energized their environmental concern and pro-environmental behaviors, whereas non-users were driven by values for pristine nature. In my final study, I developed a decision support tool to communicate findings from a stated choice experiment that was combined with attitudinal data for scenario planning in the Denali region. Findings from these three studies build theoretical knowledge of how people think, feel and act in relation to the natural world, as well as provide insights for practitioners to foster equitable and just natural resource planning.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Natural Res & Env Sciences

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Salcido, Evan Louis

Contributors dc:contributor

• van Riper, Carena J
• Stewart, William P
• Raymond, Christopher
• O'Keefe, Joy

• Environmental Values
• Inclusive Conservation
• Place Meaning
• Protected Areas
• Value Pluralism

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Evan Salcido

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121341

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F121341