Predicting the intention to protect wolves and the intention to protect human interests in a Turkish and German university student sample: the role of wildlife value orientations, religiosity, and emotions toward wildlife

Based on the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), with an additional focus on Wildlife Value Orientations (WVOs), emotions, and religiosity, we investigated factors predicting the intention to protect wolves or protect human interests in a sample of Turkish and German university students. Our findings revealed that mutualism negatively predicted the perceived severity of the threat from wolves, but positively predicted the perceived efficacy to cope with this threat in both samples. Negative emotions toward the wolf were a strong predictor of intentions to protect human interests against the wolf in both samples, and negatively predicted the intention to protect wolves in the German sample. Religiosity positively predicted the WVO of domination and negatively predicted the mutualism WVO in the Turkish sample, while it played no significant role in the German sample. Our results showed that both PMT and WVOs are suitable frameworks to explain protection intentions toward wildlife in both countries.