THE RELATIONSHIP OF ECOCENTRIC AND ANTHROPOCENTRIC MOTIVES TO ATTITUDES TOWARD LARGE CARNIVORES TORE BJERKE AND BJÒRN P. KALTENBORN Eastern Norway Research Institute, N-2601 Lillehammer, Norway Abstract Groups involved in the livestock vs large carnivore con£ict hold widely divergent attitudes toward carnivores, yet they all endorse general ecocentric values. The hypothesis that contrasting motives for the endorsement of ecocentric values may mediate between the general values and attitudes toward carnivores was evaluated in a survey among sheep farmers, wildlife managers, and research biologists in Norway. Results showed positive associations between anthropocentrism and negative attitudes toward carnivores, and between ecocentrism and positive attitudes toward carnivores for all three groups. Farmers, relative to the other groups, scored lowest on the ecocentric and highest on the anthropocentric subscales, as operationalized by Thompson and Barton (1994). This result may be interpreted within a cognitive hierarchy model where environmental beliefs may transform general ecocentric values into negative or positive attitudes toward one speci¢c environmental category. # 1999 Academic Press Introduction There is considerable variation across demographic and socio-economic groups in attitudes toward ani- mals (Kellert, 1996). One group of animals that elicit intense and often extreme attitudes, positive or ne- gative, is the large carnivores. Farmers, those who grew up with livestock production, the elderly, peo- ple with less education, and rural inhabitants often express negative attitudes toward wolves, while younger, better educated, and urban people express more positive attitudes toward this species (Kellert, 1985, 1991; Bjerke et al., 1998). When other species of large carnivores are included, similar polarized views appear (Dahle, 1987). Not surprisingly, the negative attitudes toward large predators are most typically found in groups whose economic interests are provoked by these an- imals. In one study, sheep farmers' personal antici- pated consequence for future sheep farming if depredation continues revealed strong predictive potentials toward both negative and positive atti- tudes towards large carnivores (VittersÖ et al., 1999). The e¡ect of personal importance of the pre- sence of large carnivores on attitudes towards them has been shown also by Bright and Manfredo (1996) in a study of attitudes toward wolf reintroduction in Colorado, U.S.A. The economic interest shown by farmers when they seek to protect their livestock is accompanied by activation of strong psychological processes. One study showed that the farmer's emo- tional attachment to their sheep predicted the atti- tudes toward carnivores; the stronger the attachment that farmers revealed to their sheep, the more negative were their attitudes toward large carnivores (VittersÖ et al., 1998). It has been hypothesized (Wilson, 1997) that dif- ferential access to social power, con£icting ideas about private property, and divergent beliefs about nature, are underlying social issues that drive the American debate about the reintroduction of wolves. Wilson (1997, p. 459) asserted that meanings of wolves `are ¢rmly rooted in divergent subcultural identities that de¢ne what each participant in a so- cial movement envisions for the future of the West and where each sees himself or herself with respect to theland and to society'. Such perspectives lead to the expectation that the con£icting groups hold dif- ferent basic values. There are many reasons to be- lieve that values underlie many attitudes and Journal of Environmental Psychology (1999) 19, 415^421 0272-4944/99/040415+07 $30.00/0 # 1999 Academic Press Article No. jevp.1999.0135, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on