China’s Mismatch of Public Awareness and Biodiversity Threats under Economic Trade

China
is one of the countries with high biodiversity on the globe,
but suffers extreme biodiversity loss due to the increasingly interconnected
economy. Understanding the nation-level public awareness of biodiversity
under economic trades is crucial for implementing sustainable production
and consumption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study
is the first to assess the public awareness of biodiversity loss associated
with China’s interprovincial trades by utilizing social media
data and the multiregion input–output (MRIO) table. Results
show that China’s interprovincial trades cause heavy threats
not only to local species but to distant species. Approximately 60%
of provinces displace over half of their consumption-based biodiversity
threats to other provinces. Nevertheless, individuals do not clearly
realize their responsibility for the distant biodiversity they consumed,
with a large mismatch both in popularity (Gini index = 0.51, Robin
index = 39.57) and donation (Gini index = 0.69, Robin index = 54.58).
To alleviate this phenomenon, our analysis suggests that the expansion
of national-level nature reserves may be effectively beneficial to
public biodiversity awareness, showing significantly positive partial
correlation coefficients with individuals’ popularity and donations.
These insights provided by this study offer targeted information for
conservation and call for synergistic collaboration between the civil
society, especially consumers, and governments to turn the tide of
biodiversity loss.