Eloise Seymour

Consideration of community values in regional natural resource decision making

Eloise’s research aims to make a contribution to improving regional NRM decision-making processes as well increasing theoretical understanding of the links between values and behaviour.

An understanding of the values that people hold for natural places is an important consideration for decision-making processes regarding the management of natural areas at the regional scale. The general values that people hold for the environment are called ‘held values’, whereas the values that people attach to specific natural places are called ‘assigned values’. Assigned values may be able to tell us a great deal regarding the beliefs, attitudes and behaviour of individuals regarding specific natural places.

Eloise’s research fall into the CRC’s Program 4 research area and is related to the INFFER project.

Objectives:

• Understand the differences in community values for three natural assets (wetlands, river and box-ironbark forest) on the Moolort Plains, Victoria
• Understand the extent to which values assigned to natural assets are explained by held values and other factors
• Investigate the relative importance of assigned values for predicting behaviour towards specific natural assets.

For more information, email Eloise.