Conservation impacts and socio-demographic characteristics mediate perceptions of trophy hunting

Luke C Evans, Victoria L Boult, Thomas Frederick Johnson 

Trophy hunting is a divisive topic in conservation, with recent events and policy proposals reigniting heated debates over its acceptability. To understand what shapes divergent opinions on trophy hunting, we conducted an opportunistic survey that gauged the degree to which the perceived acceptability of trophy hunting was influenced by a range of contextual factors (e.g. animal welfare, conservation implications). The survey presented respondents with five varying trophy hunting scenarios and asked them to score the acceptability of each. We found a large subset of respondents rejected trophy hunting across all scenarios. We then conducted a two-step analysis, first identifying socio-demographic traits associated with rejection of trophy hunting, finding that older, female respondents choosing a non-meat containing diet and with lower levels of education were more likely to outrightly reject trophy hunting. We then explored contextual parameters of trophy hunting scenarios influencing acceptability among respondents who varied in their scores across scenarios. Here we found that most importance was placed on the conservation impacts of trophy hunting, but that this was balanced amongst animal welfare concerns, economic implications for local communities, and the hunter’s motivation to hunt. Our results underline polarisation in the trophy hunting debate, with some respondents rejecting trophy hunting under all scenarios, while for others, the perception of acceptability was contingent on contextual factors. While our survey is only opportunistic, it points to the likely difficulties of reaching a broad consensus over the acceptability of trophy hunting and identifies a necessary caution when interpreting surveys that may implicitly assume a certain ethical framework towards judging the moral acceptability of conservation practices.