Preventing wildlife crime with a focus on orangutans: Applying social influence techniques to public education efforts

Abstract

Orangutans are projected to become critically endangered or extinct this century if humans continue to destroy their habitat. Threats include legal and illegal clearcutting of rain forests to establish palm oil plantations, climate change, and transnational organized crime. This study examines how self‐benefit and other benefit appeals, knowledge of threats, concern about habitat loss, and liking orangutans are associated with (a) intent to protect habitat due to licit threats and crimes against wildlife, and (b) seeking information to save habitat. Upon entry to a zoo, 251 (118 men, 128 women, and 5 unknown) persons viewed posters highlighting the benefits of habitat conservation to self or others and completed a survey. Concern, threat knowledge, liking, and self‐benefit and other benefit appeals accounted for 28% of the variance associated with intent to take action to protect the habitat. Integrating social influence principles into zoo displays and addressing barriers that prevent conservation behavior are discussed. The ideas in this paper are relevant to many primates and endangered species.

A good reason to buy: Justification drives the effect of advertising frames on impulsive socially responsible buying

“…For example, some studies on green purchase behavior find stronger positive effects of self‐benefit message frames over other‐benefit frames (e.g., Cozzio et al, 2022; Visser et al, 2015; Yadav, 2016), while others find the opposite (e.g., Jäger & Weber, 2020; Wei et al, 2012). In addition, research on generating charitable support is not entirely unambiguous (e.g., Sattler et al, 2020). Fisher et al (2008) claim that mainly other‐benefit advertising frames enhance donating behavior.…”

“…The effectiveness of advertising codepends on how messages are framed (Waymer et al, 2021). Companies embedding sustainability in their strategies have the possibility to choose between (at least) two types of advertising frames: self‐benefit advertising frames, which communicate the benefits for the consumer (e.g., “These chocolates will make you happier”), versus other‐benefit advertising frames, which communicate that the main beneficiary of the purchase is someone or something other than the consumer (e.g., Fisher et al, 2008; Kim et al, 2021; Sattler et al, 2020), such as the social or environmental cause that the company supports (e.g., “These chocolates empower cacao farmers”). There is a growing body of literature that recognizes that the two types of advertising frames elicit various responses (e.g., Ryoo et al, 2020).…”