Responses of South African land-use planning stakeholders to the New Ecological Paradigm and the Inclusion of Nature in Self scales: Assessment of their potential as components of social assessments for conservation projects

The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale is a commonly used tool to investigate the degree of ecocentricity of participants, i.e. the extent to which they endorse pro-nature views. Here we used the scale as part of the formative research for a conservation project aimed at persuading land use planning stakeholders associated with municipalities to use the conservation priority maps produced by conservation planners. In order to assess its capacity to differentiate between groups of stakeholders according to their degree of ecocentricity, we applied the NEP scale to 53 participants comprising 16 officials responsible for land use planning issues and 37 locally elected councilors (politicians) from South African municipalities. We also applied the Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scale – a single-item graphic measure – to the councilors in our sample who all hold anti-conservation views, in order to explore their connectedness to nature. The NEP scale scores were effective in differentiating councilors and officials, and people of Xhosa and other cultural groups, suggesting that the scale has good potential as a component of a social assessment for conservation projects. We found little concordance between the NEP and the INS scales, owing largely to Xhosa participants who mostly scored low for the former, and high for the latter scale. We recommend the use of both scales for social assessments for conservation projects in multi-cultural contexts.