A good deal of research has recently focused on people's commitment to biodiversity conservation by investigating their "willingness-to-pay" (WTP). Because of the public's self-reported preferences for species that are more charismatic or similar to humans, conservation programs are often biased toward these species. Our study aimed to explore the determinants of WTP among 10 066 participants in a zoo conservation program. The program aims to raise money to support conservation programs and involves donating a sum of money to "adopt" an animal in the zoo. We explored whether participants were influenced by particular scientific characteristics of the animal (IUCN conservation status and phylogenetic distance from humans) or by more affect-related characteristics, such as the charisma of the animal. We found that participants did not choose an animal to adopt because of the endangered status of the species, and did not donate more to endangered species than to other species. Instead, they were more likely to choose a charismatic species. However, surprisingly, those who chose a less charismatic species gave more money on average to the program than those who adopted more charismatic species, suggesting a higher level of commitment among the former. These results therefore suggest that this type of conservation program may not be an effective way of reconnecting people with conservation issues related to endangered species. We therefore advise zoos to communicate more strongly on the level of threat to species and to increase the ratio of endangered over charismatic species in their animal adoption programs.

Human cooperative behaviour, as assayed by decisions in experimental economic dilemmas such as the Dictator Game, is variable across human populations. Within-population variation has been less well studied, especially within industrial societies. Moreover, little is known about the extent to which community-level variation in Dictator Game behaviour relates to community-level variation in real-world social behaviour. We chose two neighbourhoods of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne that were similar in most regards, but at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of level of socioeconomic deprivation. We administered Dictator Games to randomly-selected residents, and also gathered a large number of more naturalistic measures of cooperativeness. There were dramatic differences in Dictator Game behaviour between the two neighbourhoods, with the mean allocation to the other player close to half the stake in the affluent neighbourhood, and close to one tenth of the stake in the deprived neighbourhood. Moreover, the deprived neighbourhood was also characterised by lower self-reported social capital, higher frequencies of crime and antisocial behaviour, a higher frequency of littering, and less willingness to take part in a survey or return a lost letter. On the other hand, there were no differences between the neighbourhoods in terms of the probability of helping a person who dropped an object, needed directions to a hospital, or needed to make change for a coin, and people on the streets were less likely to be alone in the deprived neighbourhood than the affluent one. We conclude that there can be dramatic local differences in cooperative behaviour within the same city, and that these need further theoretical explanation.