Humans are the leading cause of shark mortality in the modern era. Growing recognition of the importance of human dimensions (e.g., perceptions, attitudes, behaviours) for successful shark conservation has driven increased research in recent years. With the aim of mapping key concepts, findings, and gaps, we conducted a scoping review of research that incorporated human participants in the context of sharks and shark conservation (K = 171). Perceptions were the most frequently investigated human dimension concept, followed by behaviours, experiences, and attitudes. The most researched shark species were hammerheads (Sphyrna spp.) and white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), although most studies ambiguously referred to “shark(s)” in measures, potentially skewing findings towards prototypical species. Evidence synthesis indicated that tourists and the public held positive attitudes towards sharks, although fear was evident among the public. Tourism may foster positive conservation outcomes and willingness-to-pay to shark conservation; however, studies reported ceiling effects due to participants being already environmentally conscious. Fishers recognised sharks' ecological importance but perceived depredation as increasing due to conservation efforts, and reported feeling underrepresented by management, conservationists, and science. Ocean-users consistently favoured non-lethal shark management, yet awareness of method lethality was low. Knowledge of sharks was positively associated with attitudes towards sharks across participant populations. Overall, we highlight clear, actionable gaps in the literature that future studies should address, and emphasise the need to incorporate social science perspectives in designing, implementing, and interpreting research on human behaviours and experiences in the context of sharks.

Ocean Literacy (OL) can be broadly defined as a framework for understanding the complex and evolving relationships between people and the ocean. It is increasingly recognized as a vital component of marine conservation and sustainability efforts. OL is inherently interdisciplinary, and psychology, while being a particularly relevant field, remains an underutilized field in this space. This paper demonstrates how psychological theories, frameworks, and validated measures can meaningfully inform OL strategies across its ten proposed dimensions: knowledge, awareness, attitudes, behavior, activism, communication, emotional connections, access and experience, adaptive capacity, and trust and transparency.

This study explores the relationship between dating app use, body image outcomes, and appearance-related behaviours in young adult users. A total of 118 participants (72 women, 41 men; age range: 18-34 years; M = 25.11, SD = 4.33) were included, who were current or recent dating app users. Gender differences in dating app use and their impact on body image outcomes, including appearance-based rejection sensitivity, body appreciation, weight control behaviours, and cosmetic surgery acceptance, were examined. Correlation analyses revealed significant associations between dating app use and body image outcomes with broad differences between two genders, women and men, indicating different appearance pressures and appearance-modification strategies related to dating app use. Regression analyses identified perceived success as a consistent predictor of all body image outcomes for women, highlighting the role of societal standards and social validation in shaping self-perception. These findings suggest that appearance centred media such as dating apps play a significant role in body image outcomes, particularly for women, and highlight the importance of considering protective filtering and intervention mechanisms on dating apps or for dating app users.

Context The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is under threat from multiple anthropogenic activities such as tourism and climate change. Understanding participants’ knowledge about the GBR can encourage conservation of the GBR. Aim This study investigated what participants, whom were all Australian, know about the GBR, the species that reside there and the threats to the GBR ecosystem. Methods Participants (n = 113), recruited by social media, completed a short online survey that included four open-ended items exploring various aspects of GBR knowledge. Key results Results indicated that participants identified a range of threats to GBR, that fell into broad categories of environmental and social impacts. Results also showed that the most common broad taxa identified were fish, coral and reptiles, and that clown fish were the most common specific GBR species identified. Conclusions In conclusion, this study has provided evidence of limited knowledge of species that live in the GBR, and basic broad knowledge of threats to the GBR. Implications This study has contributed new insights regarding knowledge of GBR and recognition of animals that live in the GBR to show where public awareness campaigns should be focused and highlighted avenues for future research.

It is well established that most higher education students experience stress, stemming from a range of factors such as exams, time demands, and financial pressure. Given the rising number of students completing their tertiary studies online, identifying stressors faced by the growing online student cohort is important. Therefore, a systematic review was undertaken to identify and consolidate what the key stressors experienced by online higher education students are. This review analyzed 68 articles published in English between 2001 and 2022, retrieved from three databases: ERIC, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. The review found that online university experience a range of stressors, including challenges related to course delivery, technology access, online communication, home learning environments, peer relationships, motivation, and assessments. Strategies to mitigate these stressors include improving course design with engaging and interactive contents, providing technological support and digital literacy training, fostering peer connections through structured interactions, and offering flexible assessments tailored to online contexts. These findings underscore the importance of considering the unique stressors experienced by online students and highlight the need to develop interventions to mitigate these stressors when designing and delivering online courses.

Background Online undergraduate programs are increasingly popular, yet students often enter with inaccurate expectations about academic requirements. Objective This study aimed to determine whether mismatches between students’ initial and current expectations are associated with their approaches to learning, academic achievement, and wellbeing. Method We measured 113 online undergraduate students’ expectations of their undergraduate studies, learning approaches, university-related stress, anxiety, burnout, and academic achievement in an online survey. Results When current expectations fell short of initial expectations (a negative mismatch in expectations), students reported greater study-related stress, anxiety, cynicism, and adopted surface learning approaches. Students reported greater academic efficacy, higher GPA, more study time, and more deep and strategic learning approaches when their expectations were exceeded (a positive mismatch). Further, students’ learning approaches mediated the relationship between mismatched expectations and wellbeing. Conclusion This study confirmed that when online undergraduate students experience a mismatch between their expectations of higher education and their actual experiences, this mismatch is associated with their approach to learning, wellbeing, and academic performance. Teaching Implications Higher education institutions should set realistic expectations for new online students and encourage the adoption of a strategic approach to learning, thereby enhancing student wellbeing and academic success.

Context Social science research, particularly qualitative data collection, is vital in wildlife conservation science. Aims While large representative samples are valuable, scaling qualitative data collection is often challenging due to its cumbersome nature. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the effectiveness of less time-intensive approaches. Methods This study explores the use of word association (three words to describe sharks) as qualitative data, analysed using both automated statistical tools in R Studio and manual content analysis. We employed word clouds, sentiment analysis, latent Dirichlet allocation, log-odds ratio, and content analysis to analyse 1006 words from 371 participants. Key results Results indicated that word clouds, sentiment analysis, and log-odds ratio were effective, while manual content analysis was better for categorising words than latent Dirichlet allocation. Conclusion Given the low participant burden, similar items should be considered in future surveys exploring human perceptions of wildlife contexts.

Within psychology education, there is a growing focus on undergraduate students’ psychological literacy; enabling students earlier in their psychological training to directly apply their learning to their lives and in addressing contemporary societal challenges. This growing focus was a key driver for the creation of the course “Connecting and Working with Nature”. This course is a fully online, first-year psychology course that explores the human–nature relationship and sought to grow students’ knowledge and skills relating to nature connectedness and well-being while simultaneously supporting the development of their psychological literacy. To evaluate the course in relation to fostering students’ psychological literacy across personal, professional and community domains, we utilised a range of data sources including surveys, work samples, and focus groups. The findings generated through our mixed methods analyses support that our students did indeed foster their psychological literacy and draw connections between the content and their own lives, across all three domains. Courses that explore the human–nature relationship are well suited to the early development of psychological literacy. This course provided learning experiences that were tangible for all students, while also being a “safer” domain within which to ask students to begin applying their newfound psychological knowledge and skills.

Children are spending significantly less time outdoors in free play than previous generations, which has implications for children's development. This study explores parental knowledge, attitudes and the time children spend in outdoor free play. Parents or caregivers of children aged between five and nine years old (N = 82) completed an online mixed methods survey. Data collected included knowledge of the benefits of outdoor play, attitudes towards outdoor play and time children spend outdoors. Participant's knowledge varied between 1 and 19 benefits of outdoor free play (mean = 7.54). Participants had a positive attitude towards outdoor recreation, demonstrating a statistically significant positive correlation with time their child spends in outdoor free play on a non-school and school day. Findings contribute to research within the Australian context regarding the influence that parental attitude has on children's engagement with nature, allowing for potential programmes around parental attitudes, to support greater time outdoors.

The social and environmental impacts of the global fashion industry face increasing scrutiny. As such, consumers and brands look towards 'sustainable fashion' for low-impact alternatives. Simultaneously, visual social media platforms such as Instagram have become prevalent places for fashion advertising and discourse. To investigate this under-researched area, the current study utilises visual content and social network analysis to explore how sustainable fashion is presented on Instagram, specifically: (a) what visual characteristics are present within sustainable fashion content, and (b) in what broader contexts and communities is discussion of sustainable fashion taking place? Posts included under the hashtag #sustainablefashion (N = 650) were inspected for visual characteristics, including type of clothing, presence of person, post setting, presence of nature, and post format. Most posts were photographs located indoors with no person and no nature-based elements. The hashtags used alongside #sustainablefashion were analysed with Gephi software to establish a social network and community groups of related topics. Network analysis revealed four key community groups: online-promotional, artisan-traditional, eco-ethical, and Malay-online-selling. Secondhand fashion also appeared to be the most prominent sustainable fashion alternative on Instagram. This study is one of the first to investigate the characteristics of user-generated #sustainablefashion content on Instagram. Whilst social media is a burgeoning avenue for research, existing studies primarily investigate how these platforms can be harnessed for advertising, rather than what users themselves are already posting. Implications for brands who use this platform and opportunities for future research are discussed.

Endometriosis Awareness Month (EAM) is a global movement that seeks to increase awareness of endometriosis. There is a paucity of peer-reviewed research that explores the social media activity of EAM, making it difficult to draw conclusions about what information is being shared. To address this gap, we performed inductive thematic analysis to investigate the visual and written content of images (n = 879 images), as well as post captions of N = 600 posts. that contained the hashtag “#endometriosisawarenessmonth”. Results show that written content within the images most frequently contained features of the disease. Caption content featured general/vague knowledge about the disease and general awareness of endometriosis, such as ‘pain (general/unspecified)’. The mental health impact of the disease was underrepresented in Instagram posts. Moving forward, the #endometriosisawarenessmonth campaign could be strengthened by communicating specific diagnostic and prevalence information, and harnessing conversations about the impact of the disease on mental health.

Media are conduits for people to obtain information about animal species and may therefore influence how people think about these species. This study advances our understanding of animals (and plants) in the media by analysing a final dataset of 638 films categorized in the genre ‘Creature Features’. Through analysing the biography, film poster and trailer on the IMDb database, it was found that sharks were the most depicted species in creature feature films, with insects and arachnids, dinosaurs and snakes also being frequently featured. There were changes in the types of animal species commonly portrayed in creature feature films across time, with dinosaurs and primates being more frequently depicted in the 1920s–30s and sharks being more frequently depicted in recent decades. This study is the first to investigate which animal/plant species are evident in creature feature films, which is a broader genre incorporating mythology, extant and general unrealistic portrayals of animals. This allows for new understandings regarding the influence the media can have on perceptions of animal and plant species.

Social media are becoming increasingly popular in a professional context and, if used appropriately, can be beneficial to postgraduate students. Little is known regarding the extent to which postgraduate students engage with social media for postgraduate purposes. The present study aimed to understand postgraduate students’ general use of social media, as well as investigate social media use specifically for postgraduate (educational and/or scientific) purposes. A total of 231 postgraduate students from 45 countries completed a mixed-methods survey. Instagram was the most frequently used social media platform overall, with Twitter being the most commonly used for postgraduate purposes. Most students posted educational and/or scientific content on social media platforms, with approximately one-third having a social media account specific for postgraduate/scientific content. The most common reasons postgraduate students access social media for postgraduate-related purposes were personal connection with community, science communication, motivations and learning, and networking. The most common reasons for posting postgraduate content online were self-branding, accessing a broad audience, science communication, and building a postgraduate community. Overall, postgraduate students are commonly using social media for postgraduate purposes which presents opportunities to mitigate pitfalls of the student experience and promote positive mental health among this group.

Understanding attitudes toward sharks and the factors associated with them is important for promoting positive attitudes and support for conservation initiatives. We aimed to investigate attitudes toward two different shark species in an Australian context: white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias, a species that can harm humans) and whale sharks (Rhincodon typus, species that cannot harm humans). Four types of attitudes were assessed (naturalistic, moralistic, scientific, and utilitarian) in a between-group survey design with an Australian sample (n = 400; 69.5% female and 30.0% male). Results showed that at least half of the participants in both shark conditions (white and whale) scored positively on each attitude aside from the naturalistic attitude toward white sharks. Pathway diagrams were constructed to identify factors associated with each of the attitudes. The identified associated factors included perception of risk of sharks, acceptance of sharks, shark tourism experiences, connection and relatedness to nature, sensation seeking, and gender. Many of these factors are stable constructs that cannot be altered; however, they allow for researchers, conservation marketers, and policymakers to understand who to target shark conservation campaigns toward. Shark tourism experiences and perception of the risk of sharks are factors that can be altered and should, therefore, be the focus of future research in this area. Assessing four different types of attitudes toward sharks accounted for, and further supported, the complex nature of attitudes toward sharks, and the scale utilized should be considered for future research.

Social media use has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and a proliferation of conspiracy beliefs about the pandemic has been seen on these platforms. We investigate (1) the extent to which people use social media to find health information, hold conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 and engage in preventive behaviours; (2) whether belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories mediated the relationship between using social media for health information and engaging in preventive behaviours and (3) whether differences exist in social media use between those who hold and those who do not hold COVID-19 pandemic conspiracy beliefs. Participants (N = 262; M age = 28.61, SD = 10.33) completed an online questionnaire with measures of social media use, conspiracy beliefs and engagement in COVID-19 preventive behaviours. We found participants used social media for over thirty minutes per day for health information and that approximately one in three people hold at least one conspiracy belief about COVID-19. Belief in conspiracy theories mediated the relationship between social media use and engagement in preventive behaviours. Furthermore, people who used Instagram for health information and those who primarily turned to influencer and personal accounts for health information were more likely to hold conspiracy beliefs.

Online higher education is experiencing growth in enrolment and development which creates a need to continually evaluate the efficacy of online course delivery. Prior research reported that performance in online education is equivalent to traditional face-to-face delivery; however, minimal research exists to identify which elements of course design predict academic success. We aimed to identify which specific course components are predictors of (a) final course grade, (b) continuous assessment grade, and (c) major assessment grade in an online, undergraduate psychology course using data collated by the Learning Management System. We also addressed gaps in existing knowledge by exploring group differences within scores on significant predictors of course outcomes to determine whether these varied according to student characteristics. We found the number of times students visited the course site, viewed activities, and posted in activities significantly predicted students’ final course grade, continuous assessment grades, and major assessment grades. The total variance explained by the regression models, was however, relatively low and therefore there may be additional factors not considered in the present study that may predict grades. We also found non-traditional, female, domestic students, enrolled part-time and in an online degree accessed the course site, viewed activities, and posted in activities significantly more frequently than their counterparts. Universities offering online courses should provide students with regular activities and opportunities to participate in course content to promote online learning and academic success.

Despite the complex relationship that exists between surfers and sharks due to the possibility of shark-surfer interactions, to date there has been little research into these interactions. This study provides preliminary insights into the shark-surfer relationship. A sample of 391 surfers who frequently surf in 24 countries (predominantly USA), were surveyed. It was found that 51.3 % of surfers reported seeing a shark while surfing, while a further 17.2 % had personally been or know someone who had been bitten by a shark while surfing. Of the surfers who had seen a shark while surfing, the most reported shark species was white sharks (39 %). Despite these common interactions with sharks, 60 % of surfers stated that they are not afraid of sharks when surfing and 44 % stated that a shark being spotted would not stop them from going in the water. There is a need for further research into this space, to understand how frequent ocean users, such as surfers view sharks and the potential implications this has for shark conservation and management policies.

Sharks are often a focus of exaggerated news media coverage, with shark-human portrayals and the species typically involved in these interactions being discussed most frequently. This study advanced understanding of sharks in the media by analyzing 109 shark films to investigate how films portray shark-human interactions. Through analysis of the shark film storylines and posters on the online database IMDb, it was found that almost all of these films (96%) overtly portrayed shark-human interactions as being potentially threatening to humans, a few (3%) covertly portrayed shark-human interactions as being potentially threatening to humans, and only one film did not include potentially threatening interactions. These results showed that films portray sharks in a similar way to how the news media portrays sharks, and therefore future research should include shark films when investigating the influence of the media.

ABSTRACT Slow tourism is a holistic tourism concept that promotes sustainability in all aspects of a traveller’s journey. Slow tourism promotes positive outcomes for local communities such as stimulating local economies and minimising aversive environmental impacts; however, little is known about what the term ‘slow tourism’ means to tourists. The current study analysed 600 user generated images including the hashtag ‘slowtourism’ on Instagram to determine the locations and activities associated with slow tourism on the social media platform. Images were coded for geotag location and elements including landscapes, architecture, and transport. Results indicated most images were from Italy and France, and while some trends emerged such as images commonly featuring natural landscapes and architecture, there was substantial variance of content within these trends which suggests that people are associating a variety of types of tourism destinations and architecture with slow tourism. However other elements of slow tourism such as culinary experiences and transportation choices were evident less frequently. This research highlights how social media can be used to effectively investigate trends and future research opportunities within the tourism sector.