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Serengeti National Park is a world class icon for wildlife tourism attracting a diverse group of tourists from all over the world. The park has played a pivotal role in protecting large populations of wildlife species of the Eastern African savannah and the globally outstanding biological phenomena such as the annual migration of wildebeest. However, the history of the park is also characterised by resource use conflicts and pressures that could threaten the current quality of the visitor environment. In this paper we examine the attitudes of international visitors toward the management and attributes of the park. Overall, the tourists report a high degree of satisfaction with most aspects of their trip. Yet, the current tourists are concerned about possible future changes that could alter the visitor environment and idealized images of the African wild lands. Basic environmental attitudes (degrees of ecocentrism) have effects on attitudes toward management of the park. Tourists expressing a high degree of ecocentrism are more likely to support management actions aimed at controlling tourism activities, access and impacts. They also express a stronger interest in experiencing nature, wilderness and local culture. The results are discussed in light of the major impact factors and conservation issues facing the management of Serengeti National Park; poaching, poverty in surrounding communities, increasing population pressure, habitat degradation, and wildlife diseases.

Rural tourism, especially through second-home development is increasing rapidly in much of Europe, the USA and Canada offering new economic opportunities for local communities, but also challenges related to environmental impacts and differing perceptions within communities about appropriate development paths. This study examines associations between the environmental attitudes of residents and attitudes towards second-home development in two regions in Southern Norway, with community attachment and economic dependency as additional predictors. Ecocentrism was found to have a strong negative effect on attitudes towards tourism development, while, in contrast to previous findings, community attachment did not have significant effects. Economic dependency is significantly related to attitudes towards development; both ecocentrism and economic dependency are mediated by other variables, such as expected impacts and benefits. The findings are important in planning to reduce potential conflicts.

We examined the relationship between self-reported fear of large carnivores and the demographic characteristics of villagers living in a rural district adjacent to Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Data were obtained from 593 respondents living in 8 villages. The intensity of verbally expressed attitudes was heavily dependent on whether the attitude object was of a general or a specific category. Level of self-reported fear was much higher for specific species of large carnivores than for broad verbal categories like concern over safety due to carnivores in general. Women were more afraid than men. The elderly expressed lower fear than other age groups, but only in response to the general category question. Level of fear was positively correlated with educational level. For almost all questions, villagers living further away from the national park expressed more fear than villagers living closer to the park. Fear can influence attitudes toward wildlife. Understanding whether encounters with wildlife ar...

Attitudes toward large carnivores were surveyed in two regional populations of sheep farmers in Norway, using Kellert's (1991) attitude typology. The annual sheep loss rate to carnivores in the two regions were 4.5% and 0.05%, respectively. The two populations of farmers expressed identical and lowvalues on the ecologistic, moralistic, and naturalistic sub‐scales. Both groups scored moderately high on the negativistic and utilitarian subscales, but farmers from the region with the highest rate of depredation had significantly higher scores on these two subscales than farmers from the region with a low depredation rate. The farmers’ personal anticipated consequence for future sheep farming if depredation continues revealed strong predictive potentials toward both negative and positive attitudes. When controlling for the anticipated consequence of sheep loss, farmers from the region with the highest depredation rate expressed less negative and more positive attitudes toward large carnivores than th...