How to sustainably increase students’ willingness to protect pollinators

Socio‐psychological factors, beyond knowledge, predict people’s engagement in pollinator conservation

“…For example, a European public consultation with 67,000 responses showed that most respondents considered themselves to be well informed about pollinators, found pollinator declines alarming and felt significantly affected by pollinator declines (European Commission, 2018). Furthermore, studies show that attitudes towards pollinators are positively related to knowledge and benefit from education (Bhattacharyya et al., 2017; Penn et al., 2018; Schönfelder & Bogner, 2018; Sieg et al., 2018; Silva & Minor, 2017; Toomey & Domroese, 2013). There is some indication that this knowledge is matched by an intention to protect pollinators, for example participants in a UK study were willing to pay an average of £43/household/year (£842 million/year nationally) for a policy to protect bees (Mwebaze et al., 2018).…”

Citizen science in schools: Engaging students in research on urban habitat for pollinators

“…Our programme focused on building knowledge (for both the scientific community and the participating school groups) of diverse native insect pollinator taxa and was designed around standard insect sampling methods that are independent of the species present in a local area. This contrasts with programs that take a species‐centric approach based around a recognizable pollinator species that may not be locally‐relevant, for example, the European honey bee (Schönfelder & Bogner ), which is an introduced species in Australia with significantly different life cycle and ecology to native pollinator species.…”

Going Squirrelly: Evaluating Educational Outcomes of a Curriculum-aligned Citizen Science Investigation of Non-native Squirrels

“…There is little research on how direct encounters with wildlife through PPSR may impact the experiences and learning outcomes of participants, but substantial research has examined the effects of encounters with live animals on participants of wildlife tourism (where wildlife is both captive and wild) (Ballantyne and Packer 2005; Fuhrman and Ladewig 2008), as well as the potential benefits of using living animals in children's science education (Watson 2006;Hummel and Randler 2012;Schönfelder and Bogner 2018). In the context of wildlife tourism, exposure to live animals can result in strong emotional responses by participants (Ballantyne, Packer, and Sutherland 2011) and increased participant knowledge (Adelman, Falk, and James 2000), and, rarely, can promote conservation-oriented behavioural changes (Ballantyne and Packer 2005).…”