Linking Human Destruction of Nature to COVID-19 Increases Support for Wildlife Conservation Policies

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.

Public support for ‘soft’ versus ‘hard’ public policies: Review of the evidence

“…The swift and interventionist responses to COVID-19 may also enable decision action on climate change through growing preferences for harder climate and biodiversity policies like taxes and regulation. For instance, Shreedhar and Mourato (2020) found that people expressed higher support for commercial wildlife trade bans -a 'hard' conservation policy tool with wide-ranging implications -when they were informed that infectious zoonotic diseases, of which COVID-19 may be one, are linked to anthropogenic environmental change. Apart from enabling a swift reaction to other crises, experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to greater awareness, which in turn could result in policy spillovers.…”

Preparing international cooperation on pandemic prevention for the Anthropocene

“…For those communities of practice, COVID-19 has underscored issues with the sustainability and safety of contact between humans and wildlife, and concerns about how unsustainable practices could contribute to the future emergence of novel coronaviruses or similar pandemic threats. [1][2][3] More broadly, these conversations have pointed to a broader need to address the upstream drivers of poor health and disease burden outside of pandemic settings. In the One Health or planetary health tradition, pandemics can be viewed the product of several proximate drivers (eg, climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation), all of which share an ultimate cause: the explosion of consumption, and destruction of the natural world, caused by capitalism, globalisation, colonialism and neoliberal economic policies.…”

Subjective Attribution of Infectious Disease Outbreaks to Climate Change is Associated with Mitigation Behavioural Intentions and COVID-19 Recovery Policy Support

“…On a practical note, helping people understand the links between the human impact on the environment and climate change with infectious disease outbreaks is likely to help increase public understanding and engagement (Amelung et al, 2019;Roh et al, 2015;Shreedhar & Mourato, 2020). Scholars have suggested that emphasising the links between experiences of extreme weather events and climate change facilitates a congruent cognitionemotion link, likely the most successful approach (van der Linden, 2014).…”