UM News & Information Services

  Aug.1, 2002

ANN ARBOR&#151Well-designed zoo exhibits and activities that are fun and interesting can make people more environmentally aware, according to a new study by graduate students at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. And the zoos have a huge audience for their message: about 66 million people visited zoos in 2000, according to the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. The group measured the effect of an environmental exhibit called Bog of Habits at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, where visitors move from stone to stone through a bog in an interactive game that asks them to answer questions about their environmental behavior. Then it gives them feedback about the impact of their choices. “The point is not to change people’s behavior as much as to help them think more closely about what they do&#151to understand the consequences of their choices in a wider context so that they can make more thoughtful decisions,” said the group’s advisor, Raymond De Young, an associate professor of environmental psychology and conservation behaviors in the University’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. The U-M team found that such exhibits work best with children aged 4 to 7 years old, postulating that this age group is old enough to comprehend the concepts, but not so old that they are blas