Assessing Residents' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Values Towards the Duluth Urban Deer Herd

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Persistent link to this item

Statistics
View Statistics

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Title

Assessing Residents' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Values Towards the Duluth Urban Deer Herd

Published Date

2015-05

Publisher

Type

Scholarly Text or Essay

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory quantitative mail survey was to discover Duluth residents’ knowledge, attitudes, and values towards the urban deer herd. An area based purposive sample was drawn and the households selected were mailed a four-part questionnaire. The sample was comprised of households in 5 of Duluth’s 34 Deer Hunt Areas (DHAs) which had been created by the Arrowhead Bowhunters Alliance (ABA). With a 32% return rate (150 surveys returned of 469 viable sent), surveys found: scores of; 64% correct on factual deer knowledge; personal experiences, family, and friends were the most common sources of knowledge; personal perceived knowledge was higher than the perceived knowledge of others; overall attitudes and values were positive towards deer; and communication benefits were the most important attitude and values topic. From these results, it was found that factual knowledge was low, self-initiated sources of knowledge were most common, residents’ perceived knowledge was higher than factual knowledge, and naturalistic attitudes were the highest while deer tolerance and educational values were the lowest. From these results, the following recommendations were made: schools could create more lessons revolving around deer in all subject matters to increase knowledge; nature centers and ELC’s could create more programs concentrating on deer to increase positive attitudes and values towards them; government agencies could use their position for outreach campaigns revolving around deer to reach a large amount of people; and the City of Duluth and the ABA could use the results of this survey to help create a management plan for the urban deer herd.

Description

A thesis [actually a Plan B] submitted to the faculty of the University of Minnesota Duluth by Ryan Timmerman in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Environmental Education, May 2015. Committee chair: Bruce Munson. This item has been modified from the original to redact the signatures present.

Related to

Replaces

License

Series/Report Number

Funding information

University of Minnesota, Duluth. College of Education and Human Service Professions. Master of Environmental Education program.

Isbn identifier

Doi identifier

Previously Published Citation

Other identifiers

Suggested citation

Timmerman, Ryan. (2015). Assessing Residents' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Values Towards the Duluth Urban Deer Herd. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/187475.

Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.