Reassessing public opinion of captive cetacean attractions with a photo elicitation survey

BACKGROUND: Captive cetacean attractions are growing in number globally, their operators citing entertainment, education, and conservation as benefits. Those for and against developing such attractions claim public support. Previous public opinion research, however, shows little consensus, partly due to the introduction of biases in study design that influence participants’ responses. Those involved in, or concerned with, developing and licensing these attractions need to better understand what drives the lack of consensus to take socially-acceptable decisions. METHODS: We reviewed previous research on public opinion of cetacean captivity, noting possible sources of bias. Survey question wording can be a major source of introduced bias, so we used an open-ended photo elicitation approach. We showed tourists in the Turks Caicos Islands (N = 292) images of a marine mammal park (MMP) killer whale show and a swim-with-the-dolphins (SWTD) attraction and asked for their qualitative comments on the potential development of each. They also indicated how likely they would be to visit each on a Likert scale. RESULTS: Respondents were generally against visiting MMP killer whale shows, with 60.9% not likely to visit. SWTD attractions were more popular; 60.3% were likely to visit. For SWTD, USA residents were more likely to visit; older respondents and those staying in all-inclusive resorts were less likely. Those staying in all-inclusive resorts were also less likely to visit MMP killer whale shows. The great majority of qualitative comments centred on either entertainment value or animal welfare concerns. There were very few, if any, comments on the education or conservation value of these attractions. DISCUSSION: Our findings contradict several previous studies on public opinion of captive cetaceans that did not use photo elicitation. The support shown for MMP killer whale shows in this survey was well below that claimed by studies conducted on behalf of captive cetacean attraction operators. Opposition to SWTD was also noticeably lower than that found in surveys conducted with wild cetacean tourism participants. This difference can likely be attributed to the different survey populations and settings, but this variation is also very likely attributable to researcher-introduced bias. While photo selection can introduce bias, photo elicitation reduces reliance on pre-scripted questions and responses, and seems to effectively reduce other forms of bias. Allowing open-ended responses, where participants responded to an image, seems to have given a more representative understanding of what is at the forefront of the public’s mind than closed questioning. These conclusions, among others made in this study, suggest that development decisions for captive cetacean attractions are being made on imprecise data. Going forward, data collected via responder-led, open-ended, bias-minimising approaches should at least be considered when informing such decisions.