Affective forecasts and biodiversity renewal (Ref: 4446)

Biodiversity is in crisis, and often needs not simply to be protected but to be renewed. Important in addressing this situation is understanding how people respond to such changes. Previous research has demonstrated that hypothetical increases in biodiversity elicit stronger human emotional reactions than do equivalent decreases. However, the findings were limited in several ways: scenarios were realistic but hypothetical, were restricted to environmental framing of these issues (as opposed to e.g. health or economic framing), and ignored the 'appropriateness' of the biodiversity changes (e.g. whether the species were invasive). In addition, variations in geographic and cultural context could not be explored.

Importantly, this previous research looked at people's expectations of how biodiversity gains and losses might make them feel. However, humans find it difficult to predict how future changes will impact their emotions and, therefore, their behavioural responses. This latter point refers to 'affective forecasting', the difficulty of predicting how situations will affect you emotionally. It has been shown, for example, that we underestimate the positive effects of nature experience on our emotions. Furthermore, making positive emotional judgements about increases in biodiversity may not compel conservation behaviours - conversely this may lead to inaction due to the perception that solutions have already been initiated.

This interdisciplinary studentship will tackle these important issues in understanding how people respond to changes in biodiversity, using several potential approaches:

a) Experimentally testing communications which vary the framing of biodiversity renewal efforts to test the extent to which this impacts affective judgements and support for renewal efforts.
b) With real-life biodiversity renewal scenarios, testing whether affective judgements about renewal are associated with proximity to the site, recreational behaviours, or cultural acceptability of the renewal project.
c) Using longitudinal data collection efforts (in collaboration with Natural England) relating to the human 'beneficiaries' of biodiversity renewal projects. This could test the extent to which people's ex ante affective expectations regarding the impact of biodiversity renewal are matched ex post by the reality of those changes, and how such (mis)predictions impact future support for renewal projects.

Understanding how humans perceive renewal scenarios, and the parameters which most strongly affect their emotional responses to realistic changes in biodiversity will help partners' and agencies' engagement efforts by allowing them to target messaging to groups of individuals differently. It will also help partners' and agencies' adopt delivery strategies which respond to the realisation, or not, of expectations during the project lifecycle.