The Social Value of Zoos

This book situates zoos as trusted cultural institutions with valuable affordances for engaging people in natural resource conservation.

John Fraser (Author), Tawnya Switzer (Author)

9781108731812, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 April 2021

300 pages
23 x 15 x 1.5 cm, 0.33 kg

Combining anecdotes with scientific data, this book is a journalistic inquiry into what is currently known about zoos and aquariums as sociocultural intersections of mission, public perception, and on-site meaning making. The authors draw on conservation psychology and other social science research to explore how zoos might develop and deliver more effective learning experiences to promote and nurture conservation values and collective action. While people use zoos with specific priorities and motivations in mind, these are social settings. Indeed, it is because they represent an important, vast, and trusted social enterprise that zoos have such powerful opportunities to change how diverse public audiences view, value, identify, and engage with animals and the broader biophysical environment.

1. Context
2. Ontology – animal exhibits and conservation goals
3. Learning – social experiences and captive animals
4. Morality – zoos as moral actors
5. Pleasure – the educational leisure value proposition
6. Meaning – constructing knowledge through discourse, dialogue, and metaphor
7. Bonding – a socio-biological human need with important zoo mission implications
8. Connectedness – animals, continuity, and belonging
9. Identity – discovering self
10. Activation – pro-environmental behavior
11. Impact – collective conservation action
12. Integration – the socially valuable zoo.

Subject Areas: Zoology & animal sciences [PSV], Educational psychology [JNC]