“…Preference based studies have informed flagship species choices for conservation campaigns (e.g., Veríssimo et al, 2014), and investigated preferred aesthetic species characteristics (e.g., Garnett, Ainsworth, & Zander, 2018;Macdonald et al, 2015). However, as these studies and others investigate preferences for real animals (see Thomas-Walters, Mcnulty, & Veríssimo, 2019 for a review of pro-environmental research on animal imagery), the results could be confounded by other unmeasured variables, such as prior knowledge or experience of species, rather than the variables presented in the studies (Montgomery, 2002). If aesthetics are the most important characteristic for flagship species (the "Cinderella species theory"), new flagship species should have similar aesthetic characteristics to previously successful flagship species (Smith et al, 2012).…”