The activity of wildlife viewing rests on an underlying contradiction. Wild animals are generally human-averse; they avoid humans and respond to human encounters by fleeing and retreating to cover. One would therefore expect human viewing of wild animals to be at best unpredictable, intermittent, and fleeting. Yet in recent decades, wildlife viewing has become a major recreational activity for millions of people around the world and has emerged as a thriving commercial industry. How can these two things—widespread wildlife intolerance of (...) humans and large-scale human observation of wildlife—be squared? The answer is that wild animals are only viewed on this scale because they have been made viewable through human intervention. This article examines two kinds of intervention—habituation and attraction—that change wildlife behavior toward humans and render hitherto elusive animals susceptible to regular, proximate, and protracted human viewing. (shrink)

In Japan, yaen kōen or "wild monkey parks" are popular visitor attractions that show free-ranging monkey troops to the paying public. Unlike zoos, which display nonhuman animals through confinement, monkey parks control the movements of the monkeys through provisioning. The parks project an image of themselves as "natural zoos," claiming to practice a more authentic form of displaying animals-in-the-wild than that practiced by the zoo. This article critically evaluates the monkey park's claim by examining park management of the monkeys. The (...) article shows the monkey park's claim to display wild monkeys to be questionable because of the way that provisioning changes monkey behavior. Against the background of human encroachment onto the forest habitat of the monkey, the long-term effect of provisioning is to sedentarize nomadic monkey animals and to turn the wild monkey park into a megazoo. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to inform and improve the quality of electronic products and services by outlining an approach to ethically grounded design.Design/methodology/approachA number of design disciplines were investigated using desk research and also learning from experience in commercial design practice in the mobile phone, Internet and software industries.FindingsIt is suggested that design “scripts” specific behaviours with either good or bad results. Scripts have a behavioural element and they define the physical, social and individual impact of products and services. This suggests (...) that designers should be aware of the impact design decisions have throughout the product lifecycle. In order to achieve this, three ethical design principles (situated research, reflexivity and participation) are proposed to frame ethical design practice.Research limitations/implicationsIt is suggested that measuring impact alone is insufficient to minimise harm caused by electronic products and services. Instead, research should focus on positively informing design through actionable results in the participatory design tradition. Conversely, design needs to accommodate research into measuring the impact of products in order to deliver long‐term benefits to users rather than perpetuating passive consumption.Practical implicationsThe paper provides an overview of methods for value‐centred interaction design based on the analysis of alternative approaches to ethical design.Originality/valueThe research in the paper spans a number of related but heretofore separate disciplines pertinent to deepening design thinking. These disciplines are critiqued on the basis of their appropriateness and applicability to an ethical design approach and the concept of scripting, used in traditional design, is applied to interactivity. Lastly, three new principles are proposed for ethically grounded design. (shrink)