The plurality of wilderness beliefs and their mediating role in shaping attitudes towards wilderness

In light of current trends of land abandonment across Europe, the rewilding of abandoned land is increasingly discussed as a future land management option. Since many of the regions affected by rewilding developments will be located in vicinity to densely populated areas, it is imperative to better understand public's attitudes towards an expansion of wilderness. Prior research on wilderness attitudes has typically been descriptive and rarely explored the underlying processes that lead to differences in wilderness attitudes. Taking the Theory of Planned Behaviour as our framework of analysis, we examine public attitudes towards wilderness in the context of people's beliefs of wilderness, and to what extent these beliefs can explain differences in wilderness attitudes between social groups. Results of a questionnaire survey (n = 858) in the mountain region of South Tyrol in the Central Alps show that wilderness attitudes are significantly influenced by three dimensions of wilderness beliefs, corresponding to 1) respondents' general wilderness representations, 2) perceived extent of wilderness areas, and 3) expected consequences of wilderness expansion. In addition, significant differences in wilderness attitudes are found between age groups, user groups, and groups with varying degrees of interest in wildlife watching. Our results indicate that these differences are partly related to contradictory views of wilderness, suggesting that it is not only conflicting interests that may lead to differences in wilderness attitudes between social groups. We conclude that participatory processes are needed to consider the plurality of people's wilderness representations and their perception of risks and benefits for the design and implementation of socially-just rewilding initiatives.