Anthropomorphic Strategies Promote Wildlife Conservation through Empathy: The Moderation Role of the Public Epidemic Situation

Dan Yue; Zepeng Tong; Jianchi Tian; Yang Li; Linxiu Zhang; Yan Sun

doi:10.3390/ijerph18073565

Anthropomorphic Strategies Promote Wildlife Conservation through Empathy: The Moderation Role of the Public Epidemic Situation

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Mar 30;18(7):3565. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18073565.

Authors

Dan Yue^{1

2}, Zepeng Tong^{1

2}, Jianchi Tian^{1

2}, Yang Li³, Linxiu Zhang^{4

5}, Yan Sun^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
² Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ Business School, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China.
⁴ Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Simulation, Institute of Geosciences and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
⁵ The United Nations Environment Programme-International Ecosystem Management Partnership, Beijing 100101, China.

Abstract

The global illegal wildlife trade directly threatens biodiversity and leads to disease outbreaks and epidemics. In order to avoid the loss of endangered species and ensure public health security, it is necessary to intervene in illegal wildlife trade and promote public awareness of the need for wildlife conservation. Anthropomorphism is a basic and common psychological process in humans that plays a crucial role in determining how a person interacts with other non-human agents. Previous research indicates that anthropomorphizing nature entities through metaphors could increase individual behavioral intention of wildlife conservation. However, relatively little is known about the mechanism by which anthropomorphism influences behavioral intention and whether social context affects the effect of anthropomorphism. This research investigated the impact of negative emotions associated with a pandemic situation on the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies for wildlife conservation across two experimental studies. Experiment 1 recruited 245 college students online and asked them to read a combination of texts and pictures as anthropomorphic materials. The results indicated that anthropomorphic materials could increase participants' empathy and decrease their wildlife product consumption intention. Experiment 2 recruited 140 college students online and they were required to read the same materials as experiment 1 after watching a video related to epidemics. The results showed that the effect of wildlife anthropomorphization vanished if participants' negative emotion was aroused by the video. The present research provides experimental evidence that anthropomorphic strategies would be useful for boosting public support for wildlife conservation. However, policymakers and conservation organizations must be careful about the negative effects of the pandemic context, as the negative emotions produced by it seems to weaken the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies.

Keywords: anthropomorphism; empathy; negative emotion; public epidemic; wildlife conservation.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Animals, Wild*
Biodiversity
Conservation of Natural Resources
Empathy
Endangered Species
Epidemics*