Title
Believing zoos and aquariums as conservation informants
Author(s)
Voiklis, John; Gupta, Rupanwita; Rank, Shelley (Shuli) J.; de la Torre Dwyer, Joseph; Fraser, John; Thomas, Uduak Grace
Published
2023
Abstract
Zoos and aquariums play a pivotal role in conservation, including educating the public about a range of conservation topics, such as endangered species, wildlife conservation, animal well-being, environmental issues, and relevant science. Based on a half-century of research on communication and persuasion, the credibility people ascribe to these conservation messages depends on the authority people ascribe to the messengers—zoos and aquariums—as sources of knowledge. That epistemic authority combines people’s judgments about the trustworthiness of zoos and aquariums (are they competent, reliable, sincere, etc.?) and their feelings of favorability (do I like them?) and affinity (is it my kind of place?) toward these conservation institutions. In this chapter, we report on how we modeled these dependencies between message credibility and epistemic authority. Using data from two national representative surveys, we show that each aspect of epistemic authority contributes substantially to the credibility of conservation messages. We then describe the implications of our findings for zoo and aquarium leadership and provide some practical recommendations. Specifically, for conservation messages to be seen as credible, zoos and aquariums need to pay attention to all three aspects: trustworthiness, favorability, and/or affinity.
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PUB35907