Socio-psychological factors, beyond knowledge, predict people’s engagement in pollinator conservation and reveal new opportunities for increasing uptake

Description

Human behaviour is critical to conservation. However, despite numerous government strategies and extensive ecological research on pollinators, the drivers of people's engagement in pollinator conservation remain overlooked. We used a large-scale, online questionnaire (1,275 responses) to address this gap, framed around the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Perceived behavioural control (feeling able to help pollinators) and nature-connectedness (a stronger connection to nature) were consistently important predictors of people's pollinator conservation actions, whilst the importance of other socio-psychological factors depended on the particular conservation action. From a practical perspective, our findings suggest 1. Several simple, low-cost pollinator conservation actions are currently under-utilised and should be priorities for pollinator conservation programmes. 2. Strategies are needed to overcome reported practical barriers, such as communicating simple beneficial actions that can be carried out with limited time, space and money. 3. Knowledge is just one (relatively less important) factor that predicts pollinator conservation behaviour. Finally, we believe that engaging, inspiring, and empowering the public to help pollinators and take responsibility for their local environment will increase pollinator conservation. These findings are also relevant to other conservation challenges where public action could strongly impact.

Period	2022 Aug 23
Event title	6th European Congress of Conservation Biology: Biodiversity crisis in a changing world
Event type	Conference
Location	Prag, Czech RepublicShow on map