Treatments and interventions

As illustrated above, the workshops contained up to three interventions: information intervention, deliberative intervention and moralisation intervention. Furthermore, in the PM workshops questions were “socially” framed instead of individually, in the following referred to as consumer-citizen framing.

All workshops, independent of the method, incorporated an information intervention. This was included as no detailed knowledge about wolves in general and especially wolves in Germany and Saxony could have been expected from the majority of participants. The participants were handed out an information folder containing information about wolves in general and specifically in the context of Germany.

In detail the information provided covered the following topics:

• Portrait (in a sense of small description of characteristics) of the European Wolf

• Social behaviour and structure

• Diet

• Distribution, habitat and population

• Legal protection status

• Threats for wolves

• Are wolves a threat for humans?

• Conservation status of German wolf population

• Potential effects and conflicts

Participants read the folder by themselves and could ask questions at any time. The last section of the information folder containing an overview about potential effects and conflicts associated with the return of wolves to Germany was presented verbally by the moderator with the help of a poster. The information intervention aimed at creating a common reference point considering that knowledge about wolves may be low among the general public and to counteract the potential existence of stereotypes based on false information being viral in the internet and German media. Although efforts were undertaken to describe the environmental good scientific accurate and balanced, the information provided may alter participants’ attitudes (Ajzen et al., 1996). Assuming that the bias is consistent among individuals as everyone is confronted with the same information it does not pose a threat to this study design and appears favourable over an uninformed or ill-informed situation. In fact, it can be argued that the impact of information on preferences should not be considered to be an undesired bias but to lead to more complete and accurate preferences (see e.g. Bergstrom et al., 1990).

The moralisation intervention consisted of two alterations compared to the other treatments.

Firstly, the Short Schwartz’s Value Survey (SSVS) (Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005), which is a shortened version of Schwartz’s Value Survey (SVS) (Schwartz, 1992), was given to participants as additional questionnaire.²⁰ The aim of the intervention was to make transcendental value explicit based on the assumption that they thereby “enter” the valuation context. The original SVS comprises more than 50 value items and was applied by Kenter et al.

(2014) in a valuation workshop. Consideration of such a high number of items is a demanding

20 The SSVS was translated into a German version (SSVS-G) by Boer (2014).

task and may cause high fatigue during the valuation workshop (see Stern et al., 1998).

Therefore, it was decided to use the SSVS which is reduced to 10 value items while having a high validity and reliability with regards to the original scale (Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005).

The participants had to evaluate each of the value item’s importance for them personally. The ten value items comprise (Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005):

• Universalism

• Benevolence

• Conformity

• Tradition

• Security

• Power

• Achievement

• Hedonism

• Stimulation

• Self-direction

Secondly, the PM treatment incorporated a citizen(-consumer) framing implying that the wording of the questions and tasks differed in order to emphasize the society instead of the individual. The underlying assumption is that thereby participants consider We-preferences instead of I-preferences. As illustrated by Table 5-3, a handful of studies investigated WTP with reference to an individual and/or a social framing.

Table 5-3 Comparison of WTP questions’ verbal-framing in citizen-consumer-dichotomy literature

21 Curtis and McConnell (2002) assumed that participants automatically take on the citizen role when confronted with an environmental good that has private and public benefits (and costs).

22 Only a framing to activate the citizen perspective was used and no consumer preferences elicited.

Based on the existing literature the verbal-framing and tasks differed between the treatments as illustrated in Table 5-4. The individual or rather consumer framing was identical in case of CV and PE.

Table 5-4 Comparison of verbal framing between methods

Document Individual framing Social framing

Survey background We would like to know how in agriculture or rather livestock farming are affected. (...)

When answering all questions, please consider:

• (...)

• How important is the project to society?

Source: Own illustration

As discussed above, only the PM workshops incorporated the moralisation intervention which was followed by the deliberative intervention. The deliberative intervention was only conducted in the PE and PM valuation workshops. The intervention differed (partly) due to the different aims of deliberation. As illustrated in Section 3.1.2, the aim of PE is primarily on information provision, information sharing and complexity reduction, while in PM the focus is on revealing implicit values, social learning and accounting for multidimensionality of value. This was primarily implemented by the discussion guidance. In the PE workshops, the questions initiating the discussion were focussing on the perception of the projects and their perceived necessity, resulting costs and benefits for humans and wildlife, and aspects of biodiversity loss.

In contrast, the discussion in the PM workshops was initiated by referring to the moralisation intervention participants completed just before. While in the SSVS participants evaluated which of the ten basic values are most important for them personally, in the group discussion the moderator asked the group which of these values they consider most important for society or rather within society. After discussing the basic values in a societal context, the next question asked participants which of these ten basic values they consider relevant for the suggested projects. Thereafter, the questions were the same as in the PE groups.

The moderator had several tasks during the group discussion: i) facilitating the discussion; ii) answering questions; iii) correcting false information voiced by participants; iv) creating a pleasant atmosphere so participants would feel comfortable to contribute; v) giving everyone the opportunity to talk and counteracting domination of speaking time. The moderator did not voice any personal positionality (at least he sought not to do so). All discussions were recorded.