Beyond inspiration: Translating zoo and aquarium experiences into conservation behavior

Expanding the role of the future zoo: Wellbeing should become the fifth aim for modern zoos

Zoos and aquariums have an enormous global reach and hence an ability to craft meaningful conservation action for threatened species, implement educational strategies to encourage human engagement, development and behavior change, and conduct scientific research to enhance the husbandry, roles and impacts of the living collection. The recreational role of the zoo is also vast- people enjoy visiting the zoo and this is often a shared experience amongst family and friends. Evaluating how the zoo influences this "captive audience" and extending its reach to include a compassionate approach to animals and people can further enhance the mission, value, and relevance of their work. The modern zoo's current aims-Conservation, Education, Research and Recreation-provide useful foundations for the activities that zoos conduct at a local and national level. However, to improve sustainability of their actions and outcomes, we feel that Wellbeing should become the fifth aim of the modern zoo for the future- both from an animal perspective (ensuring that populations are managed according to prevailing behavioral needs) and from a human perspective (enhancing access to nature, promoting planetary friendly behavior changes and ways of living, and advancing the wellbeing of the zoo's workforce). This paper provides discussion and review of how Wellbeing is already a substantial part of what zoos work on as well as posing the idea of altering the Recreation aim of the zoo to one of Engagement, which potentially is more measurable and therefore can allow zoo researchers and managers further options for the collection of evidence on the local and global reach of their zoo's aims. Education, Engagement, Conservation, Research and Wellbeing provide a more complete picture of the roles of the modern zoo for the animals (both in situ and ex situ), human visitors and workforce, and to society more widely.

'Walking the talk': Applying community-based social marketing to a pilot food waste programme at Lincoln Park Zoo

Zoos and aquariums are uniquely situated to encourage the adoption of pro-environmental behaviours by the public at large. While the activation of conservation behaviours in a visitor base is necessary, there is an equally essential call to 'walk the talk' by aligning organizational missions and identity with internal practice. This study evaluated an adapted community-based social marketing (CBSM) model to foster food waste-related behaviour change in a unique audience of zoo staff and volunteers. This paper describes an innovative, real-world example of how conservation institutions can modify conservation psychology theories and the CBSM framework for the practical application of mission-aligned pro-environmental behaviour change campaigns. While audience engagement fluctuated throughout the campaign, we observed an attitudinal and/or behavioural shift in our target audience as a result of the campaign, indicating some success in achieving positive outcomes. The implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations are made about how to sustain momentum and participation in campaigns, including the utility of a scale for engagement approaches relative to organizational capacity and resources available.