Interest in insect die-off and intention for action using Google trends

1. The publication of “More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas” by Hallmann et al. in October 2017 gained vast media coverage in Germany. The insect crisis as conservation topic has received little attention among the public before, but since media influences people’s awareness, we investigated i) whether the study publication induced increased awareness among the German public for insect die-off, and ii) whether it contributed to people’s intentions to undertake insect protecting actions. 2. We used Google Trends to examine the people’s internet activity in terms of keywords relevant to our research question. 3. A high peak in Google searches for insect die-off (Insektensterben) was indeed visible just after the study publication, and search volume remained significantly higher for the following six months, confirming that the topic gained attention. 4. Searches for the three keywords insect hotel, bee friendly and bee meadow incre...