DIRIGE ACTIVIDADES DEL BUCEO SCUBA

All statistical analysis of the data were realized with the help of IBM SPSS Statistics 20.

9.4.1 Structure of the sample

To get an overview of the whole sample, descriptive analysis were performed about the stratification of the sample in terms of educational background, gender and age. In the process the technical sciences group was integrated into the natural science group, because it only comprised 9 respondents (2.1% of all respondents). All further statistical procedures were performed with the resulting three groups.

9.4.2 Testing the hypothesis

In the first step the whole sample was analyzed, according to the topical clusters mentioned in section 9.1, to test for the validity of hypothesis 1 (see

section 8), and to get a reference set to compare with the results in the different groups.

The second step was to uncover whether answers given to the questions depended on the affiliation with a certain group of studies, and/or other factors, like gender and to perform inter-group comparisons to show differ- ences/similarities between the groups of studies. These analysis were used to test for hypothesis 2-4 (see section 8). This was achieved with the help of Chi-square tests.

10

Results

The final number of filled out questionnaires returned was 437. The approxi- mate return rate for the questionnaires administered via the u:net directory, which contributed to more than half of the sample (about 237), was about 1 out of 10 (the questionnaire was sent to 2471 students). In the following, frequencies include missing values, which are not shown.

10.1

Descriptive analysis of the whole sample

The sample consisted of 69.1% female and 30.4% male respondents. The mean age of the respondents was 25.97 years with a standard deviation of 5.73 years. The median of the time studied in the sample was 8 semesters. On a five-stage scale (from 1 ‘heavily influenced’ to 5 ‘did not influence at all’) about whether students thought that their study subject influenced the answers given in the questionnaire, 48% of the respondents either answered with 1 or 2, 30.9% answered with either 4 or 5.

27.5% of the respondents stated that they are a member of an envi- ronmental organization or regularly support an environmental organization financially. About half of the respondents grew up in an urban environment (48.1%) and half in a rural environment (50.6%). 88.8% of respondents had come across the term ‘interdisciplinarity’ and 52.4% across the term ‘trans- disciplinarity’ in connection to scientific work. 50.8% stated that they had already participated in interdisciplinary seminars or projects. 85.1% of the respondents believed, that cooperation between economists and ecologists helps to mitigate biodiversity loss.

10.1.1 Knowledge of biodiversity

Of all respondents 80.1% had already heard of the term ‘biodiversity’, 91% ticked the most adequate definition of biodiversity (‘Biodiversity is the whole diversity of animal and plant species and ecosystems on this planet and the genetic information contained in them’) and 39.2% thought that biodiver- sity is ‘a basis for important ecosystem functions’. They also believed that ‘loss of life-supporting ecosystem functions’ was one of the main dangers of biodiversity loss, 88.9% ticked that answer. Another concern was ‘the loss of genetic resources that could be of importance in the future’, which was named by 66.4% of the respondents. 55.3% believed that biodiversity loss and climate change are problems of similar magnitude, half of the remaining respondents named biodiversity loss the bigger problem, half named climate change. Concerning the magnitude of species extinction until the year 2050, 63.5% of the respondents believed that it will lie between 10% and 30% of all currently living animal and plant species.

10.1.2 Feelings concerning biodiversity loss

On a five-stage scale (from 1 ‘very upset’ to 5 ‘not upset’) students were on average considerably upset when they heard of the extinction of a species (69.1% answered with 1 or 2). They also strongly believed that all species must be protected (95.7%). Although 69.4% believed that they could person- ally contribute to the conservation of biodiversity, 40.9% of those students did not know how to make a contribution. 40.4% of all respondents even stated that they feel ‘helpless’ in the face of biodiversity loss. Still 69.3% of the whole sample would be willing to spend between 0% and 5% of their monthly income to protect an animal or plant species. 56.4% of the students stated that they are environmentally aware and try to include that into their daily lives.

10.1.3 Valuing biodiversity

To highlight which kind of value (aesthetic, economic, moral, ecological- functional) students give to ecosystems and biodiversity, simple diagrams provide a good help. Aesthetic and economic values showed similar patterns of perceived importance (median = 2, on a five-stage scale from 1 = ‘fits perfectly’ to 5 = ‘does not fit at all’). Moral value seemed to be of little bit higher importance to students (median = 2), and ecological-functional value

Figure 4: Different conceptions of the value of biodiversity

of major importance (median = 1). Please note the differences in scaling of the y-axis in figure 4.

77.6% of the respondents believed that nature should not be traded as a good on markets and 43.2% thought that it is important to express the value of species and ecosystems in monetary terms to raise awareness. 68.6% of the students believed that the monetary value of all species and ecosystems taken together lies in the range of trillion Euros per year.

10.1.4 Management options

Answers to the question about what students believed was the most effective way to protect biodiversity were pretty uniform in the categories: ‘expand protected areas (without human influence)’, ‘change consumption patterns’, and ‘raise public awareness’. Between 80% and 90% of all respondents ticked

those answers, the highest support (88.2%) was found for the last category. Only 44% ticked ‘spend more money on the protection of the environment’ and 6% ticked ‘biodiversity regulates itself and does not need to be protected actively’.

The highest percentage of the respondents (96.1%) believed that experts (scientist, managers of protected areas) should design strategies for the pro- tection of species. For the other 3 answers (the government, the local people, an international NGO) support ranged between 40% and 60%.

Concerning the support for different management strategies, between 60% and 80% of the students ticked the answers: ‘experts design management strategies together with NGOs and governments’; ‘public knowledge is fos- tered through education in schools, universities, museums, zoo, etc.’; and ‘local initiatives are started were the local people are responsible for pro- tecting local biodiversity’. The highest support (82.1%) was found for the second category. Only 17.4% of the respondents ticked the answer: ‘bio- diversity is tagged with monetary value, products arise that are profitable, markets regulate the protection of biodiversity’.