Authors: Lehnen, Lisa; Arbieu, Ugo;Böhning-Gaese, Katrin;Bunnefeld, Nils;Glikman, Jenny A.;Kaczensky, Petra;Mehring, Marion;Reinhardt, Ilka;Mueller, Thomas;

Support for wildlife protection hinges on attitudes towards the target species. Consequently, drivers of attitude have been studied extensively. While traditionally focusing on risks/costs, studies have recently highlighted the importance of wildlife-associated benefits or emotive and normative aspects. Those different factors have not been considered together, however, and their relative importance remains unclear.
We hypothesized a model of attitude formation that combines those and additional potential drivers. We tested it for data from an online survey on wolves in Germany using partial least squares structural equation models.
Wolves’ benefits were the most important driver of attitude, followed by risks, emotive valence, and normative beliefs. Emotive valence had a pronounced effect on perceived risks and benefits, while knowledge had a marginal and no effect, respectively. Social identity influenced attitude indirectly via both normative beliefs and risk/benefit perception.
Our study demonstrates the importance of perceived wildlife benefits for strategies seeking to improve wildlife-related attitudes. The importance of affective valence suggests that purely education-based approaches may be ineffective. Recognizing social identity, in contrast, seems crucial regarding its central role in attitude formation.
Our unifying model combining previously isolated drivers highlights emotive valence and social identities as promising targets for strategies towards attitudinal change.