Abstract (eng)
Conservation areas constitute a vital instrument to protect rare and threatened species or their habitats for future generations. Nevertheless, knowledge on the attitude of people affected by protected areas towards nature and nature protection issues is mostly scarce despite it is the key to assure long-lasting acceptance of nature reserves. However, once the protection area management knows the generating factors of refusal against nature conservation issues, they can start to reduce these factors.
Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the attitude towards nature, nature conservation and protected areas of the affected population by four protected areas in the Stubai Alps (Tyrol/Austria). Besides, the attitude towards the implementation of a nature park including these four protected areas constituted another point of interest. One further goal was the classification of the inhabitants into ‟nature awareness types“ possessing different tendencies in their attitude towards the ascertained nature issues. The applied method for achieving these aims was a web-survey with self-selection-sampling.
The major outcomes include an extraordinarily high participation in a nature-themed survey of persons under 29 years of age which can be ascribed to the attractiveness of web-surveys to the young. Furthermore, the interviewees showed an astoundingly positive attitude towards nature conservation and protected areas but a rather one-sided image of nature as a place of silence and recreation. Therefore, awareness campaigns containing objectives like the importance of nature as a resource pool or a non-usability-fixed appreciation of nature are necessary. Unsurprisingly, predominately those advocated the implementation of a nature park who believed in its value creation potential. Hence, to convince the opponents of the arising possibilities by a nature park, like sustainable regional development through green jobs or new marketing opportunities, constitutes a vital issue.
Moreover, the interviewed population consists of five “nature awareness types”. Three of them accept nature conservation more or less absolutely, whilst the other two may be persuaded of the necessity of nature protection by economic arguments (e.g. the attraction of nature for tourists).