Evaluating of public information meetings to address fear of brown bear

Information and education are frequently proposed as interventions to reduce the public’s fear of large carnivores. There are however few comprehensive evaluations of informational approaches, and existing evaluations rarely capture effects on human dimension factors such as people’s feelings of fear. In a recent study of public information meetings designed according to psychological principles it was found that these meetings, if the information was considered credible, could increase the participants’ social trust, and decrease vulnerability and feelings of fear. The analyses also revealed the importance of meta-communication, e.g. non-verbal cues in the interaction between presenter and audience. With the aim to further corroborate the impact of such meetings on people’s feelings of fear, approx 100 persons fearful of brown bears were during the spring 2017 invited to similar information meetings about brown bears. The participants’ self-reported fear, vulnerability and social trust were assessed before and after the meetings. The evaluation was further developed by varying the presenter of the information, adding experimental measures of fear and systematically studying the meta-communication during these meetings. Further results from ongoing analysis will be reported and discussed in relation to the evaluation of human dimensions factors in wildlife management