Motivation and Personal Engagement with Biodiversity

Increasing community awareness of, and engagement in, biodiversity and nature are key elements in many environmental conservation strategies. However, the public may take little or no action to protect biodiversity even though they may feel a strong sense of concern about its decline. This suggests that, although members of the public may be cognitively and affectively engaged with conserving biodiversity, this engagement does not necessarily translate into behavioural engagement and support for environmental policies. We hypothesised that the association between cognitive and affective engagement with conserving biodiversity on the one hand, and conservation behaviour on the other, depends on the relevance and importance of conserving biodiversity with respect to personal needs. Using a survey of the New Zealand public (n = 1000) we found that engagement with biodiversity was associated with the personal relevance and needs-based importance of conserving biodiversity. Importantly, using conditional process analysis, we found that involvement moderates the link between cognitive and affective engagement and conservation behaviour with the link strengthening as involvement intensifies. These findings help to explain why cognitive and affective engagement with conserving biodiversity do not translate inevitably into behavioural engagement with conserving biodiversity and support for environmental policies. The implication is that, to stimulate action, knowledge and sentiment must be accompanied by the perception that action to protect biodiversity will contribute in significant ways to meeting personal needs.