BMF Collaborative Project 10: Pet and plant diversity and aesthetics impact on biodiversity loss belief
AISDL Team
Email: aisdl_team@mindsponge.info
February 4, 2023
1. Project description
1.1. Background
Despite the vital role of biosphere diversity in the Earth system, the biodiversity loss rate is unprecedented. Around 1 million species are threatened with extinction, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services [1]. Moreover, the global number of mammals, birds, fishes, and plants dropped by 68% from 1970 to 2016 [2]. Urban residents are the main consumers of wildlife products and potential contributors to biodiversity conservation through financing protected areas [3-6]. Belief plays a crucial role in humans’ thinking processes and behaviors, so understanding the predictors of urban residents’ belief in biodiversity loss might help implement policies and campaigns reducing the wildlife consumption demands and enhancing willingness to finance protected areas.
Also, as the aesthetic value can significantly affect people’s motivation to conserve biodiversity at both the landscape and species levels [7], we expect its effect on urban humans’ beliefs.
1.2. Main objectives
The present study aims to explore how access to pet and plant diversity affects urban humans’ belief in biodiversity loss in two conditions of aesthetics:
- The respondent feels the house’s aesthetics due to plant/animal
- The respondent does not feel the house’s aesthetics due to plant/animal
The research project will employ the mindsponge theory and Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 urban residents (from 35 cities across Vietnam) to accomplish the research objectives presented above [8-10]. The bayesvl R package will be employed for statistical analyses [10]. For more information on BMF analytics, portal users can refer to the following book [11].
1.4. Main findings
Access to plant diversity positively influences urban residents’ biodiversity loss belief when they do not feel the house’s aesthetics due to plants/pets. Although the effect remains consistent when urban residents feel the aesthetics due to plants/ pets, it becomes negligible (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Biodiversity loss belief in different scenarios of plant diversity and aesthetics feeling
Pet diversity does not have any impact on biodiversity loss belief when the respondent feels the house’s aesthetics due to plants/animals, whereas it has a significant positive impact on the belief when the respondent does not feel the house’s aesthetics due to plants/animals (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Biodiversity loss belief in different scenarios of pet diversity and aesthetics feeling
2. Collaboration procedure
Portal users should follow these steps to register to participate in this research project:
- Create an account on the website (preferably using an institution’s email).
- Comment your name, affiliation, and desired role (e.g., literature review, method and material description, result presentation, discussion, etc.) in the project below this post.
- Patiently wait for the formal agreement on the project from the AISDL mentor.
If you have been invited to join the project by an AISDL member, you are still encouraged to follow the above formal steps.
All the resources for conducting and writing the research manuscript will be distributed upon project participation.
AISDL mentor for this project: Minh-Hoang Nguyen
AISDL members who have joined this project: Viet-Phuong La, Tam-Tri Le, and Quan-Hoang Vuong
The research project strictly adheres to scientific integrity standards, including authorship rights and obligations. We look forward to working with participants on this research project.
References
[1] Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. (2019). Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’ Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’. UN Environment Programme.
[2] World Wildlife Fund. (2020). Living Planet Report 2020 - Bending the curve of biodiversity loss. Gland, Switzerland.
[3] Nguyen MH, Jones TE. (2022). Predictors of support for biodiversity loss countermeasure and bushmeat consumption among Vietnamese urban residents. Conservation Science and Practice, 4, e12822.
[4] Nguyen MH, Jones TE. (2022). Building eco-surplus culture among urban residents as a novel strategy to improve finance for conservation in protected areas. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 426.
[5] Davis EO, et al. (2019). Consumer demand and traditional medicine prescription of bear products in Vietnam. Biological Conservation, 235, 119–127.
[6] Davis EO, et al. (2020). An updated analysis of the consumption of tiger products in urban Vietnam. Global Ecology and Conservation, 22, e00960.
[7] Tribot AS, Deter J, Mouquet N. (2018). Integrating the aesthetic value of landscapes and biological diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285, 20180971.
[8] Nguyen MH, La VP, Le TT, Vuong QH. (2022). Introduction to Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics: An innovative method for social and psychological research. MethodsX, 9, 101808.
[9] Nguyen MH. (2021). Multifaceted interactions between urban humans and biodiversity-related concepts: A developing-country data set. Data Intelligence, 3(4), 578–605.
[10] Vuong QH. (2023). Mindsponge Theory. De Gruyter.
[11] Vuong QH, Nguyen MH, La VP. (2022). The mindsponge and BMF analytics for innovative thinking in social sciences and humanities. De Gruyter.