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.
Highlights
IntroductionAs globalization continues to grow, the business model of transnational trade is becoming increasingly mature, which led to the rapid growth of legal and illegal wildlife trade worldwide [1,2]
The correlation results suggest that anthropomorphism could have affected the wildlife product consumption intention and wildlife conservation intention through the individual empathy state
According to the results of Experiment 1, we suggest that anthropomorphic wildlife photographs and texts could significantly influence individual empathy states
Summary
As globalization continues to grow, the business model of transnational trade is becoming increasingly mature, which led to the rapid growth of legal and illegal wildlife trade worldwide [1,2]. It was pointed out that the value of total wildlife trade in. China’s imports under the control of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered. Species of Wild Fauna and Flora rose from 260 million to 1.45 billion [3]. Wildlife resources are the material basis for human survival and development [4]. Driven by the lure of huge profits, the illegal wildlife trade has become the third
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