The impact of perceived threat and perceived coping efficacy on individual actions toward biodiversity conservation: a registered report

Abstract

Biodiversity has decreased drastically over the last decades, posing an existential threat to all life on earth. Addressing this threat requires urgent actions to conserve biodiversity including changing the behavior of individuals to reduce their impacts on biodiversity. In the present research, we applied an emotion-based persuasion appeal model to biodiversity conservation, based on the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), to examine how behavioral change can be best communicated and promoted. We tested the predictions of the EPPM that perceived threat (and related increases in fear) as well as coping efficacy (and related increases in optimism) interactively contribute to fostering behavioral change towards biodiversity conservation. To that end, we conducted an online experiment (N = 510) where participants read a text on the threatened status of bumblebees, a concrete example of the broader challenge of protecting ecosystems and wildlife, and subsequently performed a task where they could earn money to spend for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Results revealed no evidence for the assumptions of the EPPM, as neither manipulating perceived threat nor coping efficacy appraisal nor their interaction impacted consequential conservation behavior or self-reported conservation intention.