RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Extrinsic motivators drive children’s cooperation to conserve forests
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.10.26.466023
DO 10.1101/2021.10.26.466023
A1 Aleah Bowie
A1 Wen Zhou
A1 Jingzhi Tan
A1 Philip White
A1 Tara Stoinski
A1 Yanjie Su
A1 Brian Hare
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/29/2021.10.26.466023.abstract
AB Forests are essential common-pool resources. Understanding school-aged children and adolescents’ motivations to conserve forests is critical for improving conservation education. In two experiments with school age children and adolescents (age range: 6-16; N=1088), we demonstrate that extrinsic, rather than intrinsic motivations lead to successful cooperation in common-pool goods games to maintain a forest. We investigate participants from three nationalities (China, D. R. Congo and U.S.) and find certainty of losing individual payoffs significantly boosts successful cooperative conservation efforts across cultures. Within the U.S. sample, we find two other types of extrinsic incentive, priming discussions of the value of forests and delay of payoffs as punishment also encourage the success of cooperative conservation. Conservation simulations, like those used here, may allow educators to encourage forest protection by allowing groups to experience successful cooperation and the extrinsic incentives needed to motivate forest conservation. Future research will be needed to test if these types of simulations have long term positive impact on participant’s attitudes and behavior toward forest conservation.One Sentence Summary Extrinsic motivation increases donations for forests among children and adolescents in the United States, China, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.