Does Active or Informative Messaging Result in Greater Conservation Engagement?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read this article, because the topic of communication about nature conservation is extremely relevant around the world. The authors compare two ways of informing people about the need for environmental behavior, such as traditional scientific information and visual methods of social marketing. The authors described the research methodology in detail and gave interesting recommendations based on the conducted research.

I have a few suggestions to improve the article, in my opinion.

Due to the fact that only 11 of the 47 articles cited by the authors are modern, I doubt the relevance of the research described by the authors. If recent studies are hardly mentioned, it means that the authors are not well informed about the latest research results that could influence this study. Perhaps a more thorough review of current articles should be done to ensure the relevance of the proposed research. A review should be made of recent studies that examine the cognitive and emotional aspects of perception in comparison.

I did not understand which mechanism the authors describe: information transfer or communication? The title of the article mentions "informative messaging", the introduction mentions "conservation communications", but the described actions do not involve dialogue, discussion, only the transfer of information to people through posters. It may be worth clarifying how the authors view communication.

The authors claim that they want to change people's behavior towards parrot fish. At the same time, the authors conduct experiments with people who are not related to environmental problems in the Bahamas. Can the conclusions of such experiments be applied to people who interact with parrot fish in local communities? These are not the same people who participated in the experiments.

There are parts in the text that are not related to the article (lines 179-187).

In my opinion, the figures take up too much space, and they are similar to each other. Maybe the authors should choose a more compact form of visualization of the results.

I hope the article will be improved and published in the Conservation journal.

Author Response

Thank you for the opportunity to read this article, because the topic of communication about nature conservation is extremely relevant around the world. The authors compare two ways of informing people about the need for environmental behavior, such as traditional scientific information and visual methods of social marketing. The authors described the research methodology in detail and gave interesting recommendations based on the conducted research. 

I have a few suggestions to improve the article, in my opinion. 

Due to the fact that only 11 of the 47 articles cited by the authors are modern, I doubt the relevance of the research described by the authors. If recent studies are hardly mentioned, it means that the authors are not well informed about the latest research results that could influence this study. Perhaps a more thorough review of current articles should be done to ensure the relevance of the proposed research. A review should be made of recent studies that examine the cognitive and emotional aspects of perception in comparison. 

Author response (AR): Thank you to the reviewer for point out this gap. We had intended to cite foundational work in this field, but clearly had missed an opportunity to better ground the paper in more recent and very relevant work. We have now added 21 new citations and a new section to the introduction to better integrate both these foundational and modern research. 

I did not understand which mechanism the authors describe: information transfer or communication? The title of the article mentions "informative messaging", the introduction mentions "conservation communications", but the described actions do not involve dialogue, discussion, only the transfer of information to people through posters. It may be worth clarifying how the authors view communication. 

AR: In the new section 1.1, we define the goal of the messages of this paper to be focused on influencing audiences behavior and not information transfer and traditional learning. We go on to talk about Cialdini’s important work of persuasion as the context for this work. We hope you agree this addresses this gap.  

The authors claim that they want to change people's behavior towards parrot fish. At the same time, the authors conduct experiments with people who are not related to environmental problems in the Bahamas. Can the conclusions of such experiments be applied to people who interact with parrot fish in local communities? These are not the same people who participated in the experiments. 

AR: Yes, we agree that this is a limitation of the study. That is why we discussed it in the paper in lines 861-875. We’ll add here that although we had wanted to conduct this study as a survey of Bahamians with their reactions to the social marketing and scientific posters, we were unable to conduct this work in this way due to the lockdown requirements in country in 2020. As such, we enhanced the rigor of the comparative design with images with no text including the control blank, icons, and photograph for direct comparison to the text-heavy scientific poster and the alternative social marketing one. With this more rigorous comparison, we moved forward with an online sample knowing the limitation of the direct reports about behavioral intention with the potential sample of people far from parrotfish, fishing, etc. As such, we are less confident or focused on the self-reported willingness to do the actions, and more focused on the tangible and relatable behaviors of volunteerism and donations, since all people can relate to these no matter their connection to parrotfish; the significant differences then reported here are linked to the poster and less to the distance of the respondents from parrotfish habitats.  

There are parts in the text that are not related to the article (lines 179-187). 

AR: Thank you for pointing out this error from the journal template! It has been removed.  

In my opinion, the figures take up too much space, and they are similar to each other. Maybe the authors should choose a more compact form of visualization of the results. 

AR: We cut Figure 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and combined into 1 figure with sections labed with letters. Clearer comparisons and more concise interpretation possible, thank you for this suggestion.  

I hope the article will be improved and published in the Conservation journal. 

AR: We agree and are grateful for your time, expertise, and help improving this manuscript.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall this work is good to read and can be considered for publication.

Nonetheless, reworking and more information and reflection is necessary.

Recommendations concerning the structure:

RQs come way too early, one way would be to move them to the end of section 1, right before you present the materials and methods. I would recommend being more general in the introduction, presenting the theories and the previous work related to your study and develop your questions from there, guiding the reader to your own study introducing Bahamas and parrotfish then. In your structure I was lost and always wanted more information about the methods, because you already bring them in, but not that the whole study can be understood from the beginning.

Another point you discuss is the fact, that you surveyed a population, which is not directly affected by this conservation problem. This information comes very late in the paper and I think this has serious consequences. It´s easy to have positive emotions for a conservation problem that is not experienced by the person in her/his daily life! This framing should be introduced earlier in the paper, since this is a strong restriction for the interpretation. If you ask fishermen and restaurant owners on the Bahamas, the views would be quite different! Moreover I learned, that the people giving the information, earn money for their clicks in your survey. This is also a restriction, I cannot judge at the moment. Do you have the log time of the people for your questionnaires e.g. to compare the time spent on both posters or on the pictures? With these data you could also show, that the restrictions raised here don´t have auch an impact.

Some further remarks:

Please check all your references and the style, this is not MDPI compatible. At the moment they are not consistent, sometimes letters of first names were included (e.g. 68, 97, 127, ...), & or and both used between coauthors, ...

Check for additional blanks and missing spaces.

Please remove lines 178-187: this is text from the journals website to guide your writing process, not your original text (mistake that leads to plagiarism). Style of references is described there as well.

Remove table 1 and the corresponding text: since you do not work with it in this study, it does not help in understanding your study.

Fig. 1 does not make much sense, since the differences cannot be seen in the figure. What do the * mean? Normally this is used for indicating significant differences, I doubt this in this case. Give the absolute numbers for the results. If the difference is significant, this must be an effect of the huge sample size.

Please be consistent with the wording: sometimes you describe "active" for the "social marketing poster", it´s not easy to follow and it took me reading back and forth to connect these (or am I still mistaken?).

Tab. 6: You don´t give the options that were given for e.g. education level, income, race/ethnicity, therefore it is not comprehensible.

line 565 "strategic" is used twice

140 space before (Jacobson... - check additional and missing spaces in the whole paper

Author Response

Overall this work is good to read and can be considered for publication. 

Nonetheless, reworking and more information and reflection is necessary. 

Recommendations concerning the structure: 

RQs come way too early, one way would be to move them to the end of section 1, right before you present the materials and methods.  

AR: The research questions and objectives of the study were combined and moved to the end of section 1.  

I would recommend being more general in the introduction, presenting the theories and the previous work related to your study and develop your questions from there, guiding the reader to your own study introducing Bahamas and parrotfish then.  

AR: Based on this reviewer’s comments and the two others, a much more detailed introduction was added with more context and literature from both theoretical foundations and modern studies in conservation science. We hope this provides a stronger start to the manuscript.  

In your structure I was lost and always wanted more information about the methods, because you already bring them in, but not that the whole study can be understood from the beginning. 

AR: Thank you for pointing out the error of sharing the research questions so early without the methods being clear. We moved the research questions down based on the other reviewers’ comments, following the more traditional structure of a social science paper of introducing the objectives right before the Methods section. We clarified the experimental design and messages in the compared posters, and hope this resolves this confusion for the reviewer.  

Another point you discuss is the fact, that you surveyed a population, which is not directly affected by this conservation problem. This information comes very late in the paper and I think this has serious consequences. It´s easy to have positive emotions for a conservation problem that is not experienced by the person in her/his daily life! This framing should be introduced earlier in the paper, since this is a strong restriction for the interpretation. If you ask fishermen and restaurant owners on the Bahamas, the views would be quite different!  

AR: We agree that the onsite sampling would have been ideal to reach this target audience! We were limited by lockdown in the Bahamas post-Covid that prevented any travel to the sites. As such, we increased the sample size online and improved the experimental comparison to be able to answer the research question independent of the respondents’ location or past experience with the behaviors or target conservation species. We added these details to both the Methods section description and the discussion of the limitations of the study.  

Moreover I learned, that the people giving the information, earn money for their clicks in your survey. This is also a restriction, I cannot judge at the moment. Do you have the log time of the people for your questionnaires e.g. to compare the time spent on both posters or on the pictures? With these data you could also show, that the restrictions raised here don´t have auch an impact. 

AR: We included in the methods and discussion points about the monetary payment as the incentivization for participation. However, the total amount of $0.75 for survey participation is not deemed a significant amount enough to alone change survey responses. This monetary amount is on par with payments offered by other Amazon Mechanical Turk tasks.  

We are not able to include any data about the time viewing each poster, just that the structure of the online survey which required the respondent to view the poster for at least 15 seconds before being able to click the next button. We use the number of words as a surrogate to viewing time, assuming if they respondents read the full poster (which might not be the case either in this study OR in the real world when posters are promoted.) 

Some further remarks: 

Please check all your references and the style, this is not MDPI compatible. At the moment they are not consistent, sometimes letters of first names were included (e.g. 68, 97, 127, ...), & or and both used between coauthors, ... 

AR: All citations were checked and put into MDPI format. Thank you for this revision suggestion to comply with the requirements.   

Check for additional blanks and missing spaces. 

 AR: Checked and resolved the few issues with these errors. 

Please remove lines 178-187: this is text from the journals website to guide your writing process, not your original text (mistake that leads to plagiarism). Style of references is described there as well. 

 AR: Thank you for pointing out this error from the journal template! It has been removed.  

Remove table 1 and the corresponding text: since you do not work with it in this study, it does not help in understanding your study. 

 AR: Thank you for this opportunity for efficiency and removing unnecessary information. We removed Table 1 and references to it in the text.  

Fig. 1 does not make much sense, since the differences cannot be seen in the figure. What do the * mean? Normally this is used for indicating significant differences, I doubt this in this case. Give the absolute numbers for the results. If the difference is significant, this must be an effect of the huge sample size. 

AR: We cut figure 3, though the content of the means and standard errors were moved to Table 2. Yes despite close mean scores, the large sample size teased out significant results. This is emphasized in the Table rather than the figure.  

Please be consistent with the wording: sometimes you describe "active" for the "social marketing poster", it´s not easy to follow and it took me reading back and forth to connect these (or am I still mistaken?). 

AR: This inconsistency was resolved with a focus on the social marketing term throughout the manuscript. The word active remains in the paper only when appropriate to describe the design decision being made for the social marketing purposes. Additional clarity was added to the caption for Figure 3 to ensure the differences in the 5 types of posters being compared was clear to the reader.  

Tab. 6: You don´t give the options that were given for e.g. education level, income, race/ethnicity, therefore it is not comprehensible. 

 AR: Thank you for pointing out this error and opportunity for readability. The items for each demographic variable were added to the Methods section where other metrics were described, lines 272-285.  

line 565 "strategic" is used twice 

AR: Done. Thank you for noticing this error! 

140 space before (Jacobson... - check additional and missing spaces in the whole paper 

AR: Checked and resolved the few issues with these errors. 

AR: We are grateful for your time, expertise, and help improving this manuscript. 

Reviewer 3 Report

1.       The article presents an interesting and necessary research approach so as more effective and persuasive conservation campaigns are needed to address climate change and other biodiversity issues.  

2.       The paper introduces an enriching review of psychological contributions to pro-environmental behaviour that should be improved. Although the authors refer to the works conducted by Steg & Vleck and many other studies like Bandura and Deci & Ryan work on motivations, I miss, considering the topic and goal of the current research, at least a mention of the relevant works conducted by Cialdini and colleagues for many years on the environmental field, specifically their estimable contribution to the science of persuasion and the application of empirical research towards environmental conservation goals.   

3.       In terms of the structure of the paper, I find this paper a bit odd that the authors present the research questions as well as the study objectives in the introduction, instead of the method (as usual in social science papers).

4.       Section 2 should make more explicit the contextualization of the study, the instrument design, explaining better the sample of the study in terms of socio-demographic characteristics. Specially because they are asked to donate money.

5.       Discussion should be a general analysis of the results of both studies as well as a reflexive comparison between the general results of the study and previous works according to the state of the art. I would recommend increasing this section of discussion providing a more analytical and profound reflection about the findings and move the recommendations to a following section (ex. Conclusions and recommendations).  

Author Response

 
1.       The article presents an interesting and necessary research approach so as more effective and persuasive conservation campaigns are needed to address climate change and other biodiversity issues.   

AR: thank you for this positive assessment of the research approach and the topic.  

2.       The paper introduces an enriching review of psychological contributions to pro-environmental behaviour that should be improved. Although the authors refer to the works conducted by Steg & Vleck and many other studies like Bandura and Deci & Ryan work on motivations, I miss, considering the topic and goal of the current research, at least a mention of the relevant works conducted by Cialdini and colleagues for many years on the environmental field, specifically their estimable contribution to the science of persuasion and the application of empirical research towards environmental conservation goals.    

AR: Based on this reviewer’s comments and the two others, a much more detailed introduction was added with more context and literature from both theoretical foundations and modern studies in conservation science. As you suggested, we included Cialdini’s work and empirical studies in the context of environmental conservation. We hope this provides a stronger start to the manuscript. 

3.       In terms of the structure of the paper, I find this paper a bit odd that the authors present the research questions as well as the study objectives in the introduction, instead of the method (as usual in social science papers). 

AR: As also requested by Reviewer 1, The research questions and objectives of the study were combined and moved to the end of section 1. While they could also have fit in the Methods section, we kept them in the Introduction but at the very end, due to their relationship to the literature review on the topic giving them context.  

4.       Section 2 should make more explicit the contextualization of the study, the instrument design, explaining better the sample of the study in terms of socio-demographic characteristics. Specially because they are asked to donate money. 

AR: We reworked the Methods section to make the design of the survey and the experiments, the section of the participants, etc. much more clear.  

In regards to the question of the monetary donation, this hypothetical reaction of willingness to donate any money from $0 to $40 in increments of 5 is not an actual donation by the respondents but just a tangible measurement of something valuable and relatable no matter the culture, language, context, etc. This same technique was used by Jacobson et al. 2019, and we used the same survey instrument.  

5.       Discussion should be a general analysis of the results of both studies as well as a reflexive comparison between the general results of the study and previous works according to the state of the art. I would recommend increasing this section of discussion providing a more analytical and profound reflection about the findings and move the recommendations to a following section (ex. Conclusions and recommendations).   

AR: We added to the discussion of the overall results and added more context within the state of these results compared to similar research.  

Thank you for the suggestion to separate the discussion from the conclusions and recommendations. We have gone ahead and made this separation with the new Conclusions and Recommendations section added.  

AR: We are grateful for your time, expertise, and help improving this manuscript. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors are appreciated for their detailed responses to my review. The comments provided have been considered in the new version of the article. However, a few minor corrections are required.

Could the authors please clarify the meaning of the letter 'i' in line 191?

Additionally, it appears that the numbering of the research questions is disrupted in lines 193-198.

After making these minor corrections the article is ready for publication in the Conservation journal.

Author Response

Thank you for the quick responses from the reviewer! We are grateful for their support of this manuscript. 

We have removed the errant "i" that was an error from the extensive revisions. 

We have resolved the incorrect numbering for the research questions.

Thank you! 

Reviewer 2 Report

thanks for the thorough rework, the manuscript is much better and nearly ready for publication from my side.

The references in text still are not the style of the journal and minor issues could be found as well:

79 check reference (initials of authors included)

195 numbering of the RQs did not work

Author Response

Thank you to the reviewer for their fast response and supportive comments. 

We have resolved the error of the research question numbering. 

We have reviewed all of the references for accuracy and removed author initials for the in-text citations where they were incorrectly left. I've also reviewed the full in-text citations and reference list for any errors. 

Thank you for your time and help improving this manuscript!