Conservation Perspectives Assessment of Protected Area Management in South Africa

We created a survey with 55 statements about the challenges and trade-offs protected areas in South Africa face. The survey asked people to indicate to what degree they agreed or disagreed with these statements using a 7-point Likert scale. Most of the surveys were done online, but a few were done using a printed survey form. The survey was completed by three distinct groups, namely conservation staff, national park visitors, and other conservation professionals. The cover page of the questionnaire indicated that participation was voluntary and confidential, that the participant could leave the survey at any time, and that by completing the questionnaire consent was given that the data may be used in publications. The full data set contained 1,584 responses. After analysing the responses, we found four main dimensions that capture variation in values that shape people’s views on conservation: (1) a strong focus on the effects of conservation on people, especially local communities; (2) prioritizing the economy; (3) protecting nature for its own sake; and (4) welfare of individual animals. More details on the survey (and a copy of the survey instrument), analyses and results can be found in the paper associated with this dataset, which is published by Smit et al., in People and Nature (2025). The demographic variables of the data was removed to create de-identified data.