In search of a conservation ethic

As in Chapter 5, we do not try to specify how closely linked people’s perceptions are to their actions, even though this issue will have obvious ramifications for sustainable forest management (SFM). The attempt to address the issues reported here involved the use of cognitive mapping. We reasoned that a conservation ethic would have to involve a cognitive element. An accurate measurement of people’s perceptions relating to forests might help us better define the idea of a conservation ethic. We chose the Galileo multidimensional scaling method as a measurement instrument (described in the Introduction; see also Chapter 5). One of its strengths (the use of local concepts) is also one of its weaknesses. We were not really free to “toss in�? concepts of specific interest to us.1 Fortunately, sufficient commonality of concepts across sites allowed us to make some reasonable comparisons, although the number of sites differs depending on the cognitive distances compared. We considered the appropriateness of concepts to the context more important than subsequent convenience in analysis.