Determinants of conservation attitudes for urban wild boar: Environmental, emotional and cognitive perspectives in children and adolescents

Conservation attitudes are shaped by an individual's environmental, emotional and cognitive perspectives, but these factors can form complex trade-offs for animals that evoke fear and disgust. These ‘problem-causing’ species are often perceived as threats to human interests, particularly in the context of human–wildlife conflict, and therefore receive limited public support for conservation—even among individuals who value biodiversity. In this pilot study, we investigated whether nature connectedness for children and adolescents could predict how environmental values, and species-specific emotions and cognitive factors influence pro-conservation attitudes for urban wild boar, a species currently subject to culling operations in Hong Kong. We surveyed 2398 school students in Hong Kong (aged 8–18) to examine: (1) factors contributing to tolerant, intolerant, and indifferent evaluations of urban wild boar; (2) predictors of protection intentions of wild boar and human interest across students with high and low levels of nature connectedness; and (3) interaction effects between nature connectedness with emotions and threat appraisals using a moderation model. Our findings indicate stronger relationships with emotions and threat appraisals over environmental values in predicting between indifference versus tolerance or intolerance of urban wild boar. Conservation intentions of students with high (vs. low) nature connectedness were less influenced by emotions toward wild boar. However, both groups were influenced by environmental values, and threat perceptions more strongly influenced intentions to protect human interests over wild boar. We recommend further research into the determinants of conservation attitudes toward ‘problem-causing’ species especially among students with higher nature connectedness.