The effect of knowledge, species aesthetic appeal, familiarity and conservation need on willingness to donate

Abstract

Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) largely select flagship species for conservation marketing based on their aesthetic appeal. However, little is known about the fundraising effectiveness of this approach or how it compares to ecosystem conservation campaigns that use habitat types as flagships. By performing a willingness to donate (WTD) survey of potential online donors from Finland, we identified which motivations and donor characteristics influence their preferences for a range of different flagship species and ecosystems. Using the contingent valuation method and the payment card approach, we found the combined funding for eight mammal flagship species was 29% higher funding than for eight bird flagship species. Furthermore, the aesthetically more appealing species, as well as the species and ecosystems that are native to Finland, attracted the most funding. We then used ordinal logistic regression to identify the factors influencing a donor's WTD, finding that knowledge of biodiversity conservation and familiarity with the flagship was associated with an increased WTD to birds and ecosystems, and people with higher education levels had an increased WTD to ecosystems. Surprisingly, species aesthetic appeal was not related to an increased WTD, although "need of conservation" was, suggesting that highlighting the plight of these less appealing threatened species or ecosystems could raise money. Our results suggest that the factors driving donating to mammals, birds or ecosystems differ, and so underline the importance of considering the diverse motivations behind donation behaviour in fundraising campaigns. They also provide new evidence of the motivations of online donors, an under-studied group who are likely to become an increasingly important source of conservation funding.

Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia

“…The same result was also revealed in the studies by Witt (2019) and Pedroso and Kungu (2019). Education and awareness has a positive consequence on personal maturity and will help to increase one's knowledge and could ultimately have an impact on the positive environmental thinking of a person (see Opacak and Wang, 2019;Rodella et al, 2019;Lundberg et al, 2019).…”

“…Choi and Fielding, 2013;Hultman et al, 2015;Rodella et al, 2019;Nie et al, 2019) showed that an individual WTP can be influenced by his/her age, gender, education, and income. Particularly, WTP can also be a function of the previous visit and visit preferences (Kamri et al, 2017), participation in environmental issues and knowledge of ecotourism and conservation (Han et al, 2011;Sadikin et al, 2017;Lundberg et al, 2019), and the level, and type of ecotourism activities, trekking, and nationality (Platania and Rizzo, 2018;Murphy et al, 2018). The present study, therefore examined the effect of attitudes towards conservation and ecotourism, environmental concern, and visit characteristics, besides the socio-demographic variables to provide a comprehensive model of visitors' WTP.…”

“…As alternative revenue options, an entry fee has been placed to access the PAs (Thapa et al, 2017;Schuhmann et al, 2019). However, as pointed out by Maynard et al (2019) and Lundberg et al (2019), an entry fee is insufficient to compensate the opportunity costs of conservation.…”

“…However, as pointed out by Maynard et al. (2019) and Lundberg et al. (2019) , an entry fee is insufficient to compensate the opportunity costs of conservation.…”

Natural history films raise species awareness—A big data approach

“…This result shows how filmmakers or conservation agencies can highlight a particular species or conservation issue by dedicating more airtime to the topic. The lack of proactive actions stemming from Planet Earth 2 through charitable donations was not completely unexpected, as awareness is just one of many factors influencing these behaviors (Lundberg et al, 2019). Proactive actions in response to conservation messages are the result of complex social processes (de Lange et al, 2019) and may happen at a considerable lag, making it difficult to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.…”