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Framing biodiversity Conceptions

Abstract

Biodiversity is a complex concept entailing scientific and political aspects. The usage of analogies, especially metaphors, that have positive influences on the understanding of complex concepts, on attitudes and behaviors, seems an interesting strategy to achieve this goal. Based on biodiversity analogies elaborated by 259 participants, a first study aims to identify two important protective approaches: preservationism that encourages humankind to limit their intervention on nature and conservationism that allows humankind to exploit nature with parsimony. We analyzed their analogies and results highlight three major groups: a scientific, a conservationist and a preservationist dimension. A second study investigates the effects of metaphorical framing on environmental attitudes and behaviors. 277 University students read a short text framing biodiversity with a preservationist or conservationist metaphor or without metaphor framing. A decision-making task and an environmental concern scale were completed. Results showed an effect of the conservationist metaphor on the decision-making task.

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