Anthropomorphic Strategies Promote Wildlife Conservation through Empathy: The Moderation Role of the Public Epidemic Situation

The
global illegal wildlife trade directly threatens biodiversity and leads to
disease outbreaks and epidemics. Therefore, in order to avoid the loss of
endangered species and ensure public health security, it is necessary to
intervene in illegal wildlife trade and promote public awareness of the need
for wildlife conservation. Anthropomorphism is a basic and common psychological
process in humans that plays a crucial role in determining how a person
interacts with other non-human agents. Previous research indicates that
anthropomorphizing nature entities through metaphors could increase individual
behavioral intention of wildlife conservation. However, relatively little is
known about the mechanism through which anthropomorphism influences behavioral
intention and whether social context affects the effect of anthropomorphism. This research investigated the impact of negative emotions associated
with a pandemic situation on the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies
for wildlife conservation across two experimental studies. Experiment 1
recruited 245 college students online and asked them to read a combination of
text and pictures as anthropomorphic materials. The results indicated that
anthropomorphic materials could increase participants’ empathy and decrease
their wildlife product consumption intention. Experiment 2 recruited 140
college students online and they were required to read the same materials as
experiment 1 after watching a video related to epidemics. The results showed that the effect of wildlife
anthropomorphization vanished if participants’ negative emotion was aroused by
the video. The
present research provides experimental evidence that anthropomorphic strategies
would be useful for boosting public support for wildlife conservation. However,
policymakers and conservation organizations must be careful about the negative
effects of the pandemic context, as the negative emotions produced by it seems
to weaken the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies.