Experimental evidence of the impact of framing of actors and victims in conservation narratives

© 2022 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology. - 1999. - 36(2022), 6 vom: 16. Dez., Seite e14015
1. Verfasser: Shreedhar, Ganga (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser: Thomas-Walters, Laura
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2022
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology
Schlagworte:Journal Article biodiversity conservation communication compassion fade comunicación conservación de la biodiversidad consumo de peces desaparición de la compasión difusión de la responsabilidad efecto de la víctima identificable mehr... enmarcado fish consumption fisheries policy framing identifiable victim effect narrativas narratives políticas pesqueras responsibility diffusion 公平 框架, 责任扩散, 可识别的受害者效应, 同情心消退, 生物多样性保护, 鱼类消费, 渔业政策, 叙事, 交流
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:© 2022 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.
Media narratives play a crucial role in framing marine conservation dilemmas by depicting human actors, such as fish consumers or the fishing industry, as responsible for negative effects of their actions on species and ecosystems. However, there is little evidence documenting how such narratives affect preferences for reducing bycatch. Behavioral science research shows that people can act less prosocially when more actors are responsible for a collective outcome (responsibility diffusion effect) and when more victims need to be helped (compassion fade effect); thus, the media's framing of actors and victims may have a significant effect on preferences. We conducted the first test of responsibility diffusion and compassion fade in a marine context in an online experiment (1548 participants in the United Kingdom). In 9 media narratives, we varied the type of actors responsible for fisheries bycatch (e.g., consumers and industry) and victims (e.g., a single species, multiple species, and ecosystems) in media narratives and determined the effects of the narratives on participants' support for bycatch policies and intentions to alter fish consumption. When responsibility for negative effects was attributed to consumers and industry, the probability of participants reporting support for fisheries policies (e.g., bycatch enforcement or consumer taxes) was ∼30% higher (odds ratio = 1.32) than when only consumers were attributed responsibility. These effects were primarily driven by female participants. Narratives had no effect on personal intentions to consume fish. Varying the type of victim had no effect on policy support and intentions. Our results suggest that neither responsibility diffusion nor compassion fade automatically follows from increasing the types of actors and victims in media narratives and that effects can depend on the type of outcome and population subgroup
Beschreibung:Date Completed 01.12.2022
Date Revised 15.04.2023
published: Print-Electronic
Citation Status MEDLINE
ISSN:1523-1739
DOI:10.1111/cobi.14015