Linking Human Destruction of Nature to COVID-19 Increases Support for Wildlife Conservation Policies
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Linking Human Destruction of Nature to COVID‑19 Increases Support for Wildlife Conservation Policies Ganga Shreedhar1 · Susana Mourato2 Accepted: 3 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper investigates if narratives varying the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic affects pro-wildlife conservation outcomes. In a pre-registered online experiment (N = 1081), we randomly allocated subjects to either a control group or to one of three narrative treatment groups, each presenting a different likely cause of the COVID-19 outbreak: an animal cause; an animal and human cause (AHC); and an animal, human or lab cause. We found that the AHC narrative elicited significantly greater pro-conservation policy support, especially for bans in the commercial trade of wildlife, when compared to the control group. Possible mechanisms driving this effect are that AHC narratives were less familiar, elicited higher mental and emotional engagement, and induced feelings that firms and governments are responsible for mitigating wildlife extinction. Keywords Narratives · Communication · Conservation · Wildlife · Extinction · Conservation policy · Environmental policy · Prosocial behaviour · Experiment · COVID19 JEL Classification D62 · D64 · D83 · Q20 · Q28 · C99
1 Introduction This paper investigates if narratives varying the likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic influence people’s support for pro-wildlife conservation policies, as well as pro-wildlife behaviours and behavioural intentions. Understanding the cause of the outbreak is important for choosing what we should do to contain it, and to mitigate the risk of future ones. Yet where the coronavirus originated from still remains a mystery. Much uncertainty
* Ganga Shreedhar [email protected] 1
Department of Psychological and Behavioural Sciences and the Grantham Research Institute for Climate change and the Environment, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
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Department of Geography and Environment and the Grantham Research Institute for Climate change and the Environment, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
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G. Shreedhar, S. Mourato
characterises debates about the origin of the coronavirus, evident from the various and sometimes conflicting narratives concurrently circulating online in news and social media. Three popular narratives proposing different causal explanations for the coronavirus outbreak are particularly pertinent for people’s engagement with wildlife and environmental conservation. The first narrative is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the COVID-19 outbreak originated in animals, and may have jumped to humans via intermediary animal hosts in a market in Wuhan which sold wildlife (Animal-Cause (AC) narrative). This is the proximate cause of the pandemic. This causal explanation is based on a growing scientific consensus that the virus is most likely zoonotic, and that the pandemic is an instance of a zoonotic spillover i.e. where animal pathogens are transmitted to
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