Beauty, Belief, and Trust: Toward a Model of Psychological Processes in Public Acceptance of Forest Management

Abstract

In this study, the authors develop a model of the formation of public acceptability judgments. The model suggests that in judging environmental management, people apply their values for the natural environment through psychological processes involving beliefs, aesthetic experience, and trust. A key aim of the study was to explore relationships among these processes. Through a mail survey, 487 Australians judged the acceptability of forest landscape management in Southern Tasmania. Structural equation modeling with these data provided general support for the model, confirming that all of the psychological processes are significant in the formation of acceptability judgments. The most importan..