To solicit support for nature and wildlife conservation, mission-driven organizations rely on professional nature and wildlife imagery in their media outlets and campaigns. We investigated whether-and if so, why-the aesthetics of images increase social media engagement (e.g., number of likes) and the extent to which images elicit moral concern for nature and wildlife. In Study 1 (N = 782 U.S. adults), we trained a neural network to predict image aesthetics in National Geographic's Instagram data and identified image-specific attributes that influence aesthetics. We found that image aesthetics predicted engagement with the Instagram posts. In Study 2 (N = 775 U.S. adults), we established the causal effect of aesthetics on engagement and moral concern, which is explained by self-transcendent emotions (awe and inspiration) and purity associated with an image. Study 3 (N = 406 U.S. adults) replicated the results, showing that our key effects were stronger for individuals who place higher importance on beauty. By demonstrating the moral significance of image aesthetics, we highlight the potential of the beauty of nature to invigorate global conservation efforts.
Keywords: aesthetics; awe; deep learning; image processing; inspiration; machine learning; nature and wildlife imagery; open data; preregistered; purity.