Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The way that we as a global society live our lives at the moment is resulting in a decline of biodiversity worldwide. A lot of people want to do something to change this but they do not know how. Conservation professionals work on providing people with the necessary information and knowledge to be able to make sustainable choices and ways to fight the loss of biodiversity. A good place to distribute this information and knowledge is in zoos and aquaria. For such educational programs to be successful there are certain things they need to contain. This includes information about the species and their natural habitats, possible threats, biodiversity, conservation work and ways for visitors to help the species. There is also a lot of evidence that inspiring and positive information can have a large effect in getting visitors to help, for example by donating money. The aim of this study was to map out the availability of such conservation educational information on Swedish zoos websites. Results showed that information about species and their natural habitats was available at all studied websites, but information about biodiversity and ways for visitors to help was missing on all studied websites. These results could indicate that Swedish zoos need to increase the conservation educational information they supply to visitors of their websites. Future research could investigate how to ensure that the educational programs actually lead to visitors taking action to help the environment and changing their behaviours and choices to be more sustainable. The aspect of web design might also be beneficial to look into to find out how best to present the information online.