Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Thinking Outside The Box Turtle: Public Perceptions Of An Imperiled Species, Colleen M. Hartel, Stuart Carlton, Linda S. Prokopy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina) experience negative impacts from human activities. Collection for the pet trade or mortalities caused by lawn mowers and vehicles are detrimental to populations, which have experienced rapid decline in Indiana. Understanding perceptions and attitudes held about species can help outreach. This study aims to observe how perceptions and fear response differ between a) genders, b) contact with box turtles, and c) conservation group membership. Mail surveys were administered to 1,378 residents of the Blue River Watershed in Southern Indiana. Respondents rated box turtles on 11 semantic differential pairs and reported their agreement …