Nature connectedness and conservation representations among zoo professionals: an exploratory case study

Zoological parks with conservation missions must reconcile commercial sustainability with conservation goals within hybrid organizational structures, making employees' nature connectedness and conservation meaning-making potentially important for achieving their dual mandate. This exploratory single-case study examines links between nature connectedness and conservation representations among employees of a marine-focused zoological park that integrates commercial operations with ex-situ conservation, research, and environmental education. A total of 104 workers completed free word association tasks on "conservation," a reduced New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale, and multidimensional measures of nature connectedness. Reliability analysis supported the use of a refined, 5-item NEP subscale for exploratory purposes. Cluster analysis identified three organizational profiles - Technical Specialists, Cross-functional Workers, and Peripheral Workers - with distinct combinations of conservation expertise, organizational alignment, and nature connectivity. Profiles differed significantly in Personal-Nature Identity and time spent in nature outside work, with Technical Specialists showing unexpectedly lower identity connection and Peripheral Workers reporting the highest nature engagement and technical specificity in their conservation representations. NEP scores, however, did not differ between profiles, and no mediation effects emerged between profiles and environmental attitudes through nature connectedness, aligning with emerging evidence of value-action gaps in complex organizational contexts. These findings suggest that, in hybrid environmental organizations, shared environmental values may coexist with heterogeneous nature connectivity patterns, indicating that organizational challenges may stem less from value conflicts than from structural and representational factors that shape how staff translate conservation commitments into practice.