Motivational functionalism and urban conservation stewardship: implications for volunteer involvement

Conservation in urban areas faces growing financial challenges and inadequate stakeholder involvement. Conservation psychology can mitigate these challenges in many ways. One way is through conservation volunteerism, if we attend to and capitalize on volunteers motivations. Conservation volunteerism significantly contributes to ecological knowledge acquisition, and public education and awareness of conservation issues. In this study, we explored volunteers motivations and how those motivations influence frequency of participation in urban conservation activities. We found that volunteers frequency of participation is most motivated by personal and social benefits rather than by environment-related reasons. Environmental motivations, otherwise marginally significant, were more salient predictors of participation to the extent that personal and social motivations were met. We discuss how ecologically focused strategies are likely to be less effective for motivating more frequent participation than motivationally based appeals to personal and social motivations of urban conservation. We discuss implications for urban conservation stewardship initiatives and suggest ways that decision makers can harness volunteers personal and social motivations to meet urban conservation practice and policy goals.