![Mean values of policy acceptability with 95% Cis. Average policy acceptability by policy justification and case. Policy acceptability measured: "What is your opinion on using the state budget to fund an infrastructure [/conservation] bill of this kind in your state?" Graph shows non-anthropocentric justification (light gray line) is higher than both anthropocentric justification (dark gray line) and control group (medium gray line) for the infrastructure and conservation policy case. The confidence intervals for the latter two estimates overlap indicating no statistically significant difference, but anthropocentric justification is depicted as lower than control. The conservation policy case has higher means than infrastructure for all policy justifications.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387338097/figure/fig1/AS:11431281299646304@1734980229065/Mean-values-of-policy-acceptability-with-95-Cis-Average-policy-acceptability-by-policy_Q320.jpg)
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Conservation for nature and wildlife’s sake: the
effects of (non-)anthropocentric ethical
justifications on policy acceptability
Lauren Yehle1, Patrik Michaelsen1
,
2, Niklas Harring1and Sverker C. Jagers1
,
3
1Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Goteborg, Sweden, 2Department of
Management and Engineering, Division of Economics, Jedi Lab, Linköping University, Linkoping,
Sweden and 3Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Corresponding author: Lauren Yehle; Email: lauren.yehle@gu.se
(Received 7 June 2024; revised 25 October 2024; accepted 4 November 2024)
Abstract
We conduct a survey experiment testing the causal link between ethical justifications and
acceptability towards two environmental policies: conservation area expansion and wildlife
infrastructure. In a 2 ×3 experiment with American participants (n=1604), we test two
ethical justifications –anthropocentric justification (nature as instrumentally valuable) and
a non-anthropocentric justification (nature as intrinsically valuable) compared to a control
group. We find partial support that non-anthropocentric justification increases policy
acceptability compared to no justification. Contrary to expectations, non-anthropocentric
justification leads to higher policy acceptability than anthropocentric justification. These
results are robust to individual differences in political orientation and environmental
concern. Additionally, participants in the non-anthropocentric experimental condition
respond that similar conservation policies generally are, and should be, passed to benefit
wildlife and ecosystems compared to control group participants. Likewise, participants
given the anthropocentric justification report that similar policies are, and should be,
passed for humans and society compared to the control group.
Keywords: Public opinion; conservation policy; environment policy; policy framing; policy justification;
survey experiment
Introduction
Human activities can fragment natural ecosystems and habitats, increasing the
challenges affiliated with safeguarding biodiversity and meeting internationally
agreed upon commitments (Mace et al. 2014). Meanwhile, people’s interest in
managing large environmental problems such as biodiversity loss, climate change,
and chemical and plastic pollution has expanded to pressure governments to take
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
that no alterations are made and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University
Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use and/or adaptation of the article.
Journal of Public Policy (2024), page 1 of 23
doi:10.1017/S0143814X24000266
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action (Fairbrother 2013; Inglehart 2008; Watson et al. 2014). The gap between
long-term environmental concern, on one hand, and behavior and attitudes with
short term implications, on the other hand, has been extensively researched and can
be made sense of as a “social dilemma”(Gifford 2011; Johansson Sevä and Kulin
2018). Social dilemmas are characterized as scenarios where a payoff structure to act
selfishly in the short term is higher than the longer-term benefits of everyone having
cooperated (Dietz et al. 2002). A third party, like the state, can develop and
administer policies to minimize collective action stressors and promote factors
facilitating cooperative behavior (Jagers et al. 2020). The state can also coerce people
to act against their selfish interests on behalf of mitigating environmental problems
(Mansbridge 2014). One potential barrier to state policy implementation is public
support, or policy acceptance.
Policy acceptability and acceptance concerns public opinion (Kyselá et al. 2019)
unlike social acceptability focusing on the perspectives of key actors and
stakeholders within the wider policy process from planning to implementation
stages (Busse and Siebert 2018). We focus on public opinion as an important aspect
of environmental policy making, especially conservation policies. The likelihood of
implementation is at least partially a result of how democratic politicians may
hesitate to pass environmental initiatives if they fear losing or maintaining office as a
result of unpopular policies (Stein 2022). Furthermore, policies are unlikely to pass
without a sufficient degree of policy acceptability, i.e., widespread positive attitudes
before implementation (Kyselá et al. 2019). Individual and contextual factors related
to the acceptance and acceptability of pro-environmental policies has rapidly
expanded in the last few years (Ejelöv and Nilsson 2020), especially for climate
policies (Drews and van den Bergh 2016).
However, conservation policy cases have not been as extensively studied, leaving
the potential effect of policy justifications on attitudes relatively unknown (Rode
et al. 2021). We explore this possibility utilizing two justifications from
environmental ethics: (1) anthropocentrism, establishing that nature is only
valuable in so far as it instrumentally improves human welfare (e.g., habitats
beneficial for ecosystem services or aesthetic purposes), and (2) non-anthropocen-
trism, asserting that aspects of the natural world are valuable intrinsically
(e.g., habitats valuable as functioning systems irrespective of human interests)
(Brennan and Lo 2022). We take inspiration from and build upon Rosa and Da
Silva’s(2005) study of ethical arguments present in the Natura 2000 initiative, a
conservation policy to preserve species and habitats in the EU. Rosa and Da Silva
(2005) focus on the ethical positions of key stakeholders like environmentalists and
economic developers, whereas we examine the effect of similar ethical frameworks
on public opinion. Thus, the aim of the study is to investigate if anthropocentric or
non-anthropocentric justification promotes conservation policy acceptability.
To meet our objectives, we utilized a 2 ×3 survey experiment administered
online in April 2024 with a sample of Americans. Though we recognize that there
are many aspects that may affect the communication of conservation policies, an
experimental design allow us to isolate and manipulate one of many potential causal
factors (Shadish et al. 2001). We randomized the policy case (wildlife infrastructure
and conservation expansion) and the ethical justification (anthropocentric, non-
anthropocentric, and none). Conservation policies are important ends in their own
2 Lauren Yehle et al.
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right to promote biodiversity (Butchart et al. 2012) and provide ecosystem services
(Adams 2014). Moreover, as Steinberg (2009) argues, conservation is relevant for
the field of policy studies overall; “biodiversity is an illuminating test case for
institutional responses to long-term policy problems, because the natural processes
at risk (the survival of species and ecosystems) require very long-term social
stewardship, the absence of which may produce irreversible losses in social welfare,
insofar as these biological resources are valued by society for their inherent worth
and for the goods and services they provide.”Wildlife corridors and protected land
areas, are two such policy solutions that can provide long-term infrastructure for the
local species and scales up to larger biodiversity concerns (Allan et al. 2022; Hobbs
1992; Schwab and Zandbergen 2011). Notably, policies like these mentioned have
been passed by bipartisan state congresses in a number of American states,
indicating that the policies may be less polarizing (Legislature of the State of Florida
2021; Schultz and Hinkins 2020; Will and Danielson 2021) and thus more feasible to
isolate the effect of ethical justification in an experimental design (Aguinis and
Bradley 2014).
In the remainder of this article, we first review previous literature, followed by
our theoretical expectations and hypotheses. Thereafter we present our method,
data and operationalizations. We then account for our results and end with a
discussion and a concluding section.
Previous research
Land use scholars research attitudes towards conservation policies through the
related concept of social acceptability (Busse and Siebert 2018). Social acceptability
studies focus on the perspectives of relevant stakeholders like land owners (Tanguay
et al. 2021) or farmers (Sattler and Nagel 2010). In depth case studies have
established the critical role local communities play in many stages of the policy
process, including design and implementation (Dimitrakopoulos et al. 2010; Junge
et al. 2009; Rico Garcí-Amado et al. 2013; Schenk et al. 2007; Siebert et al. 2010).
Social acceptability, however, captures a partly different aspect of the policy process
compared to public opinion, studied by policy acceptance scholars.
Policy acceptance research has expanded significantly in recent years –especially
for pro-environmental policies, environmental taxes, and climate policy. A literature
review by Ejelov and Nilsson (2020) highlight that left leaning ideology and
environmental concern are systematically among the most consistent factors
influencing policy support across a range of countries and environmental policy
cases. Additionally, political trust reflects an important factor for environmental
protection and taxes (Fairbrother 2016). Finally, policy specific beliefs like perceived
effectiveness and fairness are amongst the strongest determinants of environmental
policy acceptance (Bergquist et al. 2022; Drews and van den Bergh 2016; Ejelöv and
Nilsson 2020; Eliasson and Jonsson 2011; Thaller et al. 2023).
We have every reason to believe that environmental policy factors may also
matter for conservation policies to some extent, but it is still valuable to differentiate
between environmental policies (see Ejelöv et al (2022) for a full rational).
Fortunately, scholars have identified some policy acceptance factors emerging from
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conservation cases –especially policies related to wildlife management. For
example, animal value orientations effect people’s attitudes towards wild game
consumption in Germany. Relatedly, participants with higher levels of mutualism,
i.e., viewing wildlife as capable of trust with humans and as deserving of rights and
care have greater support for policies that benefit wildlife (Teel et al. 2007), even at
the cost of human interests like economic development and protected area access in
Washington state (Dietsch et al. 2016). Furthermore, a shift in higher mutualistic
values appears to effect the design of wildlife management policies that rely on
public support in a number of countries (van Eeden et al. 2017).
This being said, wildlife management is only a subset of conservation studies and
does not account for conservation policies with broader aims to address habitat and
biodiversity loss. Faccioli et al (2024) find important distributional effects on the
public preferences for which communities receive biodiversity enhancement
benefits from the housing development plan of the UK’s Net Gain policies.
Additionally, Uenal et al (2022) find negative correlations between climate (not
conservation) policy benefitting humans, non-humans, and the natural environ-
ment and the newly established ecological dominance orientation (EDO) measure.
EDO is an extension of the well-established social dominance orientation (SDO),
which measures preferences towards hierarchical structures within human society,
by measuring the preference for hierarchical arrangements with non-humans and
the environment (Uenal et al. 2022).
Recognizing that policy acceptance research regarding conservation is expand-
ing, though still limited, we answer the empirical call from prior environmental
policy acceptance studies to investigate policy framing, communication, and
justification (Eliasson and Jonsson 2011; de Groot and Schuitema 2012). Framing
studies yield mixed results in political judgment generally (Amsalem and Zoizner
2022) and environmental attitudes specifically (Rode et al. 2021). For policy cases
like climate change, participants have been arguably been pre-treated by public
debate and the media resulting in small, though significant, effects (Bernauer and
McGrath 2016). Indeed, no meaningful framing effects are found for many carbon-
neutral policies (Poortinga et al. 2023). However, other studies show that framing
effects are contingent on political partisanship and content (Feldman and Hart
2018) and personal values (Aasen and Vatn 2018). What is more, communicating
certain features of a policy as being fair (Savin et al. 2020; Dechezleprêtre et al. 2022)
and omitting negative policy outcomes (Rettig, Gärtner, and Schoen 2023) affects
policy acceptance (see also Bergquist et al. 2022). Furthermore, these findings (or
lack thereof) seem to be highly case specific as McLean et al (2024) finds that
Americans are more willing to accept a natural gas ban when it is framed as a human
health concern compared to an environmental or economic issue. Given these
mixed and case specific results, this leaves the possibility of framing effects on
conservation policies.
One potential conservation frame is policy justification –specifically
environmental ethical justification inspired by Rosa and Da Silva’s(2005) who
identified when and how stakeholders utilized strong and weak anthropocentric,
biocentric, and ecocentric justification to argue for the conservation directive
Natura 2000. The Natura 2000 initiatives intended to protect natural and semi-
natural habitats, concerned with biodiversity at the species and ecosystem level
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which they argue was a non-anthropocentric aim but could be framed with other
ethical justifications. Notably, stakeholders presented arguments within the context
of their opponent’s strategies rather than on behalf of deeply held beliefs
(e.g., conservationists who held ecocentric beliefs utilizing weak anthropocentric
justifications). These stakeholders operate within the realm of politics and public
opinion, and thus subscribing to ethical positions that do not reflect basic values
may be indefensible long term to the public (Rosa and Da Silva 2005, 123).
This study fills two research gaps. First, we extend policy acceptance methods
and concepts, specifically framing and communication, from environmental policy
generally to conservation policies specifically. Second, we expand upon Rosa and Da
Silva’s(2005) work to theorize the ways in which environmental ethical justification
may affect policy attitudes.
Theory and hypotheses
Policy acceptance research has been critiqued for weak conceptualizations, causing
the studies to be difficult to replicate and theoretically vague (Kyselá et al. 2019).
Furthermore, researchers tend to use the terms loosely without a definition
especially for land use studies (Busse and Siebert 2018). To provide conceptual
clarification, we adopt Kyselá’s et al. (2019) definitions, which have been widely
adopted by climate policy acceptance scholars (Bergquist et al. 2022; Drews and van
den Bergh 2019). From this perspective, policy acceptance and acceptability are
manifestations of policy attitudes, referring to the degree by which one favors or
disfavors a policy proposal, typically measured through self-reported scales (Bohner
and Dickel 2011, 392). Acceptability is the passive evaluative response to a proposal
(indicating the potential to accept) whereas acceptance is the passive evaluative
response to an existing policy (Kyselá et al. 2019). We understand that this
differentiation of policy acceptance and acceptability does not account for specific
actors, scale, and degree like Busse and Siebert (2018)’s concept of policy
acceptability.
Some have argued that the field of ethics may provide insight for policy makers
managing environmental issues (Jonsen and Butler 1975). For environmental
ethicists, most problems rest on what moral obligation humans have towards the
environment with ramifications for how humans should manage the earth’s natural
resources. Philosophers who argue on behalf of anthropocentrism claim that nature
is instrumentally valuable to humans for survival, economic, and/or aesthetic
reasons (Brennan and Lo 2022). If this evaluation is sufficient, then governments
can harness the same tools and duties typically used to limit human action (Callicott
1984, 299). Others have argued that anthropocentrism does not necessarily lead to
environmental degradation and fits within a well-established sustainability ethic
(Norton 1984). In contrast, non-anthropocentrists hold that nature is intrinsically
valuable in its own right, generating a “prima facie direct moral duty on the part of
moral agents to protect or at least refrain from damaging [the environment]”
(Brennan and Lo 2022). Non-anthropocentrism includes a range of environmental
ethical positions, including biocentrism as referring to animals and plants at the
individual and species level and ecocentrism extending rights further to abiotic
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elements like minerals and water (McShane 2007; Rosa and Da Silva 2005). Two
common approaches to justify non-anthropocentrism are sentientism that animals
with awareness, subjectivity, and consciousness deserve moral consideration and/or
pathocentrism which expands consideration to species with the capacity to suffer
(Gruen and Monsó 2024; Treich 2022).
We have reason to believe that both environmental ethical justifications matter.
Norton (1995) argues that non-anthropocentric justifications slow the policy
process by alienating anthropocentricists. Thus, one should expect that
anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric evaluations of nature gradually converge
(Steverson 1995). Indeed, Rosa and da Silva (2005) argue the conservation policy
Natura 2000 is “undoubtedly the daughter of weak anthropocentricism”confirming
Norton’s convergence logic occurred in the directive’s argumentation. Meanwhile,
Sagoff (1991) and McShane (2007) claim that intrinsically valuing nature will lead to
better policy outcomes, because such justification better matches the way the public
feels towards the environment: “even if anthropocentrism leaves us with good policy
recommendations, it will constrain the ways in which we think it makes sense to
care about the natural world”(McShane 2007, 178). Although directed to the
philosophical debate on whether anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric
justifications should be prioritized, these critiques are in fact an empirical question.
It is possible ethical justifications have no measurable effect on the policy process
and thus remain primarily an intellectual question. If, on the other hand, the
justifications do have an effect, this calls for an examination of how and when
politicians or policy makers can or should use ethical justifications to increase policy
acceptability. The second of these seems more likely as we know that policy
acceptance from, e.g., climate policy (Drews and van den Bergh 2016; Rode et al.
2021) can be affected to various extents by framing and communication. Regardless
of which justification is provided, we thus expect that any ethically justified policy
will increase policy acceptability compared to a policy proposed without ethical
justification.
H1a: Policy acceptability is higher when the policy is motivated with anthropocentric
justification than without ethical justification.
H1b: Policy acceptability is higher when the policy is motivated with non-
anthropocentric justification than without ethical justification.
Prior environmental policy studies find mixed or insignificant effects for framing
(Pechey et al. 2022; Poortinga et al. 2023; Rode et al. 2021). Bernauer and McGrath
(2016) have argued that the participants responding to these policy cases have pre-
treatment framing effects. However, this current study pertains to two conservation
policy cases not yet used to the authors’knowledge for survey experiments and not
as commonly debated in public or covered in the popular media. Thus, we find it
plausible to find a detectable difference between the two justifications.
We expect policies that concern humans and society to have precedence over
policies that concern non-humans (in this study –wildlife and ecosystems). This
could be conceptualized in many ways, e.g., by proceeding from rational choice
theory (Hastie and Dawes 2009), i.e., that policies concerning humans align with
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human self-interests, or by ingroup/outgroup biases which would suggest that
people give preferential treatment to species ingroup compared to inter-species
outgroup (Gaertner et al. 1993). Thus, an anthropocentric justification is expected to
increase policy acceptability compared to a non-anthropocentric justification.
However, specific environmental policies can have more obvious non-
anthropocentric beneficiaries than others. For instance, conservation expansion
policies are reasonably more implicitly concerned and linked with nature than
infrastructure policies. The non-anthropocentric justification aligns with conserva-
tion expansion policies such that this justification will be more effective for the
conservation policy case compared to the infrastructure policy case that pertains
more with human welfare. Thus, even though we expect an anthropocentric
justification which pertains to human interests to elicit more policy acceptability
regardless of policy case, this effect will be lower when the policy case is less
intuitively about society and people.
H2: Anthropocentric justification increases policy acceptability compared to non-
anthropocentric justification; however, this effect is smaller for the conservation
expansion case compared to the wildlife infrastructure case.
Finally, it should be noted that we expect both cases to garner generally high
reported acceptability, especially in a survey. We selected policy cases that are
publicly less controversial and indistinctly partisan, compared to other environ-
mental policies, such as climate policy. The two selected policy cases are examples of
an American stewardship ethic which has a long history originating in conservatism
and republicanism from the 1850s (Shutkin 2001). According to Pew Research
Center, most Americans (90% democrats and 52% republicans) believe the country
should do “whatever it takes to protect the environment”(Anderson 2017).
However, if there are partisanship effects, democrat identifying participants are
expected to be more prone to accept both cases, regardless of justification, because
the dependent variable measures the acceptability of pro-environmental expendi-
ture initiated by the state. This follows previous research indicating that left leaning
people are more supportive of governmentally initiated environmental policies
(Ejelöv and Nilsson 2020). Specifically, in the American context, democrat
identifying participants report higher environmental concern and support of a
wider range of environmental policies in surveys (DeNicola and Subramaniam
2014; Dunlap 2008).
Methods
We conducted a survey experiment investigating the causal link between policy
justifications and policy acceptability. Utilizing two policy cases increases, to some
extent, the external validity of the experiment, and we are less likely to analyze
spurious effects driven by one exceptional case. The vignettes are based on “actual
derived cases”based on American state bills with realistic factors to increase the
generalizability of the result (Aguinis and Bradley 2014). The selected policy cases
have recently been passed with bipartisan support and contain non-anthropocentric
and anthropocentric justifications within the bills’texts.
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This study was pre-registered on the open science framework (https://osf.io/
pf5dj)1and received approval through the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. All
participants voluntarily consented to participate in the survey and were
compensated for their time. Online surveys are generally more diverse and
representative of the US population, though samples may show self-selection biases
from boredom or unemployment (Aguinis et al. 2021). The lower accountability
associated with an online setting is assumed to result in lower data quality, but this is
not borne out by the empirical evidence (Hauser, Paolacci, and Chandler 2019).
Prolific panel participants, as used in the present study, are furthermore more likely
to pass attention checks, give meaningful answers, and remember previous
information and instructions compared to competing panels such as Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk, the Qualtrics panel, and undergraduate samples (Douglas
et al. 2023).
A power analysis showed that a sample of 1440 respondents would reliably detect
an effect size of 0.18 (Cohen’sd).2We recruited 1800 participants assuming that
10–20% would fail the attention checks (Abbey and Meloy 2017). On Prolific,
qualification to participate included living in the US and having completed at least
10 prior surveys on the platform with a ≥90% approval rating. We attempted to
recruit people who were not explicitly interested in environmental questions by
advertising the study as concerning “your opinion on public expenditure.”All
results were collected within 24 hours of releasing the survey in April 2024 with no
major relevant events occurring, so we expect limited exogenous effects.
In accordance with the preregistration, the final sample excluded participants
who failed a reCAPTCHA bot check (23 entries), failed an instructional attention
check to write the word blue for the number of children one had (179 participants),
or did not answer the primary dependent variable (6 participants). Of the remaining
1604 participants, 50% were female, with an age range of 18–65+(measured
categorically, the most popular response was between 25 and 34 years old).
Generally, the participants were liberal, concerned with the environment, highly
educated, and lived in urban/suburban locations. Full descriptive statistics are
provided in the supplementary materials.
The study consisted of three main parts: (1) a demographics section, including
questions about political identification and environmental concern, (2) the
experimental task, and (3) outcome measures related to the experimental task.
For the first section, we measured environmental concern with the statement: “I
am concerned about the environment”(1 =Strongly disagree –7=Strongly
agree); and level of intrinsic evaluation of nature by asking “Which statement better
reflects your opinion?”with answers indicated on a 7-point scale “Nature matters
mostly in the ways that it can help humans”(1) to “Aspects of nature have value in
themselves regardless of humans”(7). Political orientation was measured:
1The numbering of the hypotheses was changed between the preregistration and the manuscript (their
specifications remain unaltered). Hypothesis 1a and 1b in the manuscript correspond to hypothesis 1 and 2
in the preregistration, as well as hypothesis 2 to hypothesis 3.
2This corresponds with 480 participants in each of the three ethical justification justifications required to test
our first and second hypotheses, or 240 in each of the six experimental cells by case and justification required to
test our final hypothesis. This sample size can reliably detect effect sizes of 0.18 (Cohen’sd)withapowerat80%
and alpha equal to 0.05 similar to other studies (Mantzari et al. 2022).
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“Generally speaking, how do you think of yourself politically?”with the options
“Republican,”“Democrat,”“Independent,”“Other,”and “No preference.”
Participants responding with the latter three options were subsequently prompted
to select either “Republican”or “Democrat”based on which party they identified
more closely with, and their political lean was coded as their orientation for
statistical analyses. The demographics section additionally included measures of
participants’sex,age,education,location, and income (see supplementary materials
for details). To avoid post-treatment bias, these questions were asked prior to the
experimental manipulation.
In the experiment, participants read a vignette which included information about
the policy case and an ethical justification treatment. They were then asked to rate
the acceptability of implementing a similar policy in their own state. Features of the
task were experimentally manipulated in a 2 (policy case) ×3 (policy justification)
between-groups design. Regarding policy case, half of the participants were assigned
an (1) infrastructure case, based on real bills recently passed in Colorado (SJR21-
021) and Utah (HCR 13), and the other half of participants were provided a (2)
conservation case, based on a policy recently passed in Florida (SB976). In
conjunction with the policy case, participants were further randomized into
receiving one of three policy justification treatments: an anthropocentric
justification, a non-anthropocentric justification, or no specific justification. To
conclude the vignettes, all participants were informed, “These bills have typically
passed with bipartisan support,”which was true for the previously referenced
policies (Legislature of the State of Florida 2021; Schultz and Hinkins 2020; Will and
Danielson 2021). See Table 1for the complete vignettes.
These vignettes were concisely written to make the features of interest salient and
to avoid potentially confounding information. Longer treatment texts would
furthermore make the active justification treatments less comparable to the control
group participants who received less information and thereby required less
cognitive effort to complete the survey. Finally, based on pilot studies with students,
longer vignettes were associated with lower attention and manipulation check
passage; exit interviews with select pilot study participants indicated that the policy
cases were relatively intuitive requiring little additional explanation.
The study’s main dependent variable was policy acceptability. This was measured
by a single item asking respondents: “What is your opinion on using the state budget
to fund an infrastructure [/conservation] bill of this kind in your state?”. Answers
were given on a 7-point response scale with endpoints labeled “strongly against”(1)
and “strongly in favor”(7).
A comprehension check regarding the information in the experimental task was
also posed, which read: “According to the information written on the previous page,
what, if anything, did the bill reflect a concern for?”. The three available alternatives
were: “The well-being of people and society,”“The well-being of wildlife and
ecosystems,”and “There was no explicit information about this.”As per the study
preregistration, we treated the results of this check as exploratory. A pilot study
conducted on Prolific with 159 participants indicated that the check was dissimilarly
easy to answer between experimental groups; specifically, participants in the control
group (given no justification) were more prone to guess what could have motived
the bill rather than respond with the correct answer (“no information provided”)
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and therefore failed the check. To exclude participants based on this comprehension
check would therefore introduce selection bias from unequal exclusion and thus
interfere with the random assignment to experimental treatment. Instead, we
conduct the main analyses with the full sample and report sub-group analyses in the
supplementary materials. The results are substantively the same when excluding
those who failed the comprehension check, except for results pertaining to follow up
interaction analysis of H1b which will be discussed below.
Finally, the post-treatment section of the survey also included the following
questions. Perceived justification:“In general, what do you think the government is
most concerned for when passing bills like the one described earlier?”, and Preferred
justification:“In general, what do you think the government should be most
concerned for when passing bills like the one described earlier?”Both questions used
a 7-point scale where 1 =people and society, 4 =both options equally, and 7 =
wildlife and ecosystems.3
Results
The effect of providing policy justifications on policy acceptability
We predicted that providing an anthropocentric (H1a) or non-anthropocentric
(H1b) policy justification would increase policy acceptability compared to the
control condition without a justification. This was tested in a linear regression
model, regressing policy acceptability on binary indicator variables for the two
justifications with the control group as the reference level. The results showed no
support for Hypothesis 1a that an anthropocentric policy justification increased
policy acceptability compared to our control condition, b=−.05, SE =.08, p=
Table 1. Treatment vignettes
Policy Case
Wildlife Infrastructure Conservation Expansion
Several states have recently passed infrastructure
bills to invest in wild open areas. For instance,
funding has been provided for overpass
bridges, fencing, and escape ramps, which
reduces road collisions and other traffic
incidents.
Several states have recently passed conservation
bills to invest in wild open areas. For instance,
funding has been provided to connect and
manage these areas, which increases resiliency
against natural disasters and other shocks.
Policy Justification
Control/no justification Anthropocentric Non-Anthropocentric
These bills have typically
passed with bipartisan
support.
First and foremost, bills like
these reflect a commitment
to and concern for the well-
being of people and society.
These bills have typically
passed with bipartisan
support.
First and foremost, bills like these
reflect a commitment to and
concern for the well-being of
wildlife and ecosystems.
These bills have typically passed
with bipartisan support.
3“In general”was underlined in an attempt to clarify for participants that this question pertained to
similar policies overall rather than the specific policy case used in the justification.
10 Lauren Yehle et al.
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.54, 95% CI [−.02, .11], d=.04. However, in support of Hypothesis 1b, results
showed that policy acceptability was higher among participants receiving the non-
anthropocentric justification than for participants in the control condition, b=.18,
SE =.08, p=.03, 95% CI [.02, .34], d=.14.
(In)consistencies across policy case
As stipulated in the preregistration, we investigated the robustness of hypothesis 1
across policy case. Separately for each hypothesis H1a and H1b, we fitted a
regression model containing binary indicators for policy justification (coded 0 =
control, 1 =non-anthropocentric or anthropocentric justification, respectively),
policy case (coded 0 =infrastructure, 1 =conservation), and an interaction term
between the two. For both the non-anthropocentric and anthropocentric
justification, there were no significant interaction effects, ps≥.141, showing that
the effect of each justification (vs. no justification) was consistent across policy case.
Statistical significance aside, when considering the raw means (see Table 2), the
infrastructure case drove the effect of non-anthropocentric ethical justification
compared to control; the difference was not significant for the conservation case.
The interaction term became significant when excluding participants who failed the
comprehension check, b=−.46, SE =.23, p=.04, 95% CI [−.92, −.01]. The
results for non-anthropocentric justification did not change substantively for the
subsample compared to the full sample, suggesting the significant interaction was
driven by the control group’s more extreme values in the subset compared to full
sample. The supplementary materials include all analyses with a subsample of those
who failed the comprehension check, but they do not yield significantly different
primary results and are not interpreted further here.
To test whether anthropocentric justification increased policy acceptability
compared to non-anthropocentric justification but with smaller effects for the
conservation case (hypothesis 2), we regressed policy acceptability on a binary
policy justification variable (coded 0 =anthropocentric justification, 1 =non-
anthropocentric justification), a binary indicator for policy case (coded 0 =
infrastructure, 1 =conservation), and an interaction term created by multiplying
the two indicators. As hinted by the results for hypotheses 1a and 1b, we found that,
opposite to our expectation, policy acceptability was lower for participants receiving
the anthropocentric policy justification compared to non-anthropocentric
justification, b=.23, SE =.08, p<.001, 95% CI [.08, .38], d=.18.
A regression model with the interaction term returns no significant effect, indicating
that the effect of the two policy justifications did not differ depending on policy case,
b=−.08, SE =.15, p=.56, 95% CI [−.38, 2.17]. Figure 1illustrates the results for
all hypotheses.
Spillover effects from treatment on general policy perceptions and attitudes
The policy justifications had some spillover effects downstream of the primary
dependent variable. A linear regression model shows that, compared to the control
group, participants receiving the anthropocentric justification treatment perceived
the government as being generally more concerned about “people and society,”b=
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−.41, SE =.10, p<.00, 95% CI [.60, .22]. Correspondingly, participants receiving
the non-anthropocentric justification treatment stated they perceived the
government as less generally concerned about “people and society,”instead
prioritizing “wildlife and ecosystems,”b=.55, SE =.10, p<.00, 95% CI [.37, .75].
While the results about perceived policy justification may be considered a
(successful) manipulation check of the experimental treatments, we found the same
pattern regarding what participants thought that governments should be concerned
Table 2. Means and standard deviations for policy acceptability, separated by policy case and policy
justification
Policy Justification Mean (SD)
Control Anthropocentric Non-anthropocentric
5.63 (1.35)
n=527
5.58 (1.27)
n=552
5.81 (1.23)
n=525
Policy Justification Mean (SD), Split by Policy Case
Infrastructure Conservation Infrastructure Conservation Infrastructure Conservation
5.40 (1.39)
n=264
5.86 (1.28)
n=263
5.42 (1.32)
n=272
5.74 (1.20)
n=280
5.69 (1.35)
n=260
5.92 (1.10)
n=265
Figure 1. Mean values of policy acceptability with 95% Cis. Average policy acceptability by policy
justification and case. Policy acceptability measured: “What is your opinion on using the state budget to
fund an infrastructure [/conservation] bill of this kind in your state?”Graph shows non-anthropocentric
justification (light gray line) is higher than both anthropocentric justification (dark gray line) and control
group (medium gray line) for the infrastructure and conservation policy case. The confidence intervals for
the latter two estimates overlap indicating no statistically significant difference, but anthropocentric
justification is depicted as lower than control. The conservation policy case has higher means than
infrastructure for all policy justifications.
12 Lauren Yehle et al.
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about −that is, their preferred justification for similar bills. Compared to control
group participants, participants receiving the anthropocentric justification were
significantly more likely to state that the government ought to prioritize “people and
society,”b=−.23, SE =.09, p<.01, 95% CI [−.41, −.07]. Similarly, participants
receiving the non-anthropocentric justification were significantly more likely to
report that the government ought to prioritize “wildlife and ecosystems,”b=.17,
SE =.09, p<.05, 95% CI [.00, .34]). Follow-up analyses show that these effects are
further pronounced among participants paying the most attention to the
justifications (as indicated by passing the comprehension check; see supplementary
materials). Generally, regardless of justification group, the linear predictions show
that participants prefer these same bills to be passed on behalf of “wildlife and
ecosystems.”Graph 2 summarizes these spillover effects (Figure 2).
We ran a series of regressions to estimate whether these policy justification
spillover effects were consistent across policy cases. Specifically, we regressed the
outcome variable on indicator variables of policy justification, policy case, and an
interaction of the two. These analyses showed a significant interaction between non-
anthropocentric policy justification (vs. control and conservation case), b=−.40,
SE =.20, p=.04, 95% CI [−.79, −.02] (model S.6 in the supplementary
materials).4This indicates that the infrastructure policy case drove the effect of non-
anthropocentric ethical justification compared to no justification on perceived
justification of general policies.
Additional analyses
We investigated if the effect of policy justification and policy case differed between
subgroups. Table 3shows summary statistics of the variables.
Regarding political orientation, democrat and republican identifying participants
differed in the extent to which they accepted both policy cases, t(1582) =9.74, p<
.001, d=.54. To investigate how the policy justification affected those identifying
as democrats v. republicans, we regressed policy acceptability on political
orientation as a binary indicator and policy justification as an indicator variable
(coded 1 =control, 2 =anthropocentric, 3 =non-anthropocentric), and an
interaction of the three –showing no significant interaction of policy justification
and political orientation. Second, we regressed policy acceptability on political
orientation as a binary indicator and case as a binary variable (coded 0 =
infrastructure, 1 =conservation) and an interaction of the two –showing a
significant interaction. This is to say, the effect of partisanship interacts with case
such that the difference between democrats and republicans was more pronounced
for the conservation expansion case compared to the wildlife infrastructure case, b
=.39, SE =.14, p<.00, 95% CI [−.12, .65]. Complete regression results can be
found in supplementary materials (Figure 3).
Finally, we explored associations between policy acceptability and additional
factors pertaining to environmental attitudes and demographic factors. Regressing
policy acceptability on environmental concern showed higher environmental
4The constant for all these model estimates is around 4 (the neutral option) but see the supplemental
materials for specifics.
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concern to be associated with increased policy acceptability, b=.54, SE =.03,
p<.001, 95% CI [.47, .60]. Likewise, a similar regression model showed that a
higher perception of nature’s worth as intrinsically valuable was associated with
higher policy acceptability, b=.23, SE =.02, p<.001, 95% CI [.19, .27]. Among
the demographic information collected in the study, only education showed a
significant (positive) association with policy acceptability. However, this correlation
was no longer significant upon including environmental concern in the same
regression model. See supplementary materials for complete results regarding
environmental attitudes and demographic results including interactions with the
treatments.
Discussion
We designed a survey experiment to test two hypotheses pertaining to whether
anthropocentric and/or non-anthropocentric justification increases policy accept-
ability. We find no support that anthropocentric justification increases policy
Figure 2. Combined linear predictions of spillover effects with 95% CIs by policy justification controlling
for policy case. Adjusted linear predictions of regressing perceived (dark line) and preferred justification
(light line) on policy justification controlling for policy case. Perceived justification measured: “In general,
what do you think the government is most concerned for when passing bills like the one described
earlier?”Preferred justification measured: “In general, what do you think the government should be most
concerned for when passing bills like the one described earlier?”All y-values in the light gray above the
value 4 correspond with “wildlife and ecosystems”and all predictions in darker gray below correspond
with “people and society.”The graph illustrates that compared to the control condition, when given
anthropocentric justification, respondents reported answers closer to “people and society”whereas when
given the non-anthropocentric justification, respondents reported answers closer to “wildlife and
ecosystems.”All respondents perceive the bills to be generally concerned more with people and society
(dark band) but prefer the bills to be about wildlife and ecosystems (light band) regardless of justification.
There are no overlapping confidence intervals indicating meaningful differences.
14 Lauren Yehle et al.
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Table 3. Additional variables by policy justification and policy case, mean (s.d.)
Justification Case
Total Control Anthro. Non-anthro. Infra. Cons.
Perceived justification (1 =people and society, 4 =both
options equally, 7 =wildlife and ecosystems)
3.41 (1.64) 3.37 (1.61) 2.97 (1.54) 3.93 (1.63) 3.03 (1.58) 3.79 (1.62)
Preferred justification (1 =people and society, 4 =both
options equally, 7 =wildlife and ecosystems)
4.29 (1.42) 4.31 (1.4) 4.08 (1.35) 4.48 (1.47) 4.11 (1.34) 4.46 (1.47)
Environmental concern (1 =low, 5 =high) 4.27 (.88) 4.29 (.83) 4.26 (.88) 4.26 (.93) 4.27 (.90) 4.27 (.87)
Intrinsic evaluation (1 =instrumental, 7 =intrinsic) 5.74 (1.53) 5.75 (1.52) 5.75 (1.49) 5.74 (1.55) 5.79 (1.51) 5.70 (1.53)
%(n)
Political Orientation Democrat 70 (1113) 32 (356) 35 (389) 33 (368) 49 (547) 51 (566)
Republican 30 (471) 35 (165) 33 (156) 32 (150) 50 (237) 50 (234)
20 people were removed from political identification because they did not answer political lean after responding “independent,”“other,”or “no preference ”for political party preference. 5 people
did not respond for environmental concern. 6 people did not respond for intrinsic evaluation. 5 did not respond for perceived justification and 4 did not respond for preferred justification. We
exclude these participants in analysis.
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acceptability compared to no justification (H1a) or compared to non-
anthropocentric justification (H2). We do, however, find support in one of the
two policy cases (infrastructure) that non-anthropocentric justification increases
policy acceptability compared to no justification (H1b) and, contrary to our
expectation, compared to anthropocentric justification (both policy cases). The
effect of non-anthropocentric justification held irrespective of demographics (age,
location, education, and income), political identification, environmental concern,
and intrinsic evaluation of nature indicating that the results may generalize outside
the experimental condition.
Additional findings beyond the hypotheses include firstly policy case effects and
secondly, treatment effects on measured variables beyond the primary dependent
variable of policy acceptability. Regardless of ethical justification, policy
acceptability of leaving open spaces undeveloped was higher than building
overpasses and fencing to prevent wildlife-vehicular collisions. Those who identified
as a democrat with high environmental concern and intrinsic evaluation of nature
were especially supportive of the conservation expansion policy case. Also, the
policy justification treatment affected what participants preferred the government to
prioritize when passing similar conservation policies; those who received the non-
anthropocentric justification reported that governments should pass similar
conservation policies for wildlife and ecosystems, whereas those who received
Figure 3. Adjusted linear predictions of policy acceptability with 95% CIs, interaction of policy case and
political orientation. Adjusted linear predictions of regressing policy acceptability on policy case, political
orientation, an interaction of both, and controlling for policy justification. It corresponds with model E.M2
in the supplementary materials. Policy acceptability measured: “What is your opinion on using the state
budget to fund an infrastructure [/conservation] bill of this kind in your state?”Political orientation
measured: “Generally speaking, how do you think of yourself politically?”Graph shows that republicans
(light line) have lower support than democrats (dark line) for both policy cases. However, the predicted
linear estimates for republicans do not meaningfully differ between the cases whereas for democrats, the
conservation case is more acceptable than the infrastructure case. Confidence intervals do not overlap
indicating meaningful differences.
16 Lauren Yehle et al.
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the anthropocentric justification preferred policies to prioritize people and society
generally.
Our study finds that non-anthropocentric justification promotes policy
acceptability compared to anthropocentric justification, especially the wildlife
infrastructure policy case. On one hand, this is promising for policy makers who
may want to utilize non-anthropocentric argumentation in policy discussions for
efficiency or ethical reasons. What is more, many conservation policies, at least in
the US, are not as highly polarized as other environmental policies –garnering
general support from both parties (Anderson 2017; Funk and Hefferon 2019). Our
findings indicate that issues related to conservation policy may be related to ethical
considerations not currently reflected in the classic left/right or partisan cleavages.
Our study, however, fails to account for powerful interest groups, disproportionately
affected people, and key stakeholders who likely hold sway within the policy making
process.
Internal study limitations indicate that ethical justifications for conservation
policies should be further explored and nuanced. The effects of non-
anthropocentric justification may be explained by favorable attitudes towards
wildlife, which other scholars have shown are expanding (Dietsch, Teel, and
Manfredo 2016). Our study treatment (“passed on behalf of wildlife and
ecosystem”) does not systematically delineate the different forms of non-
anthropocentrism, i.e., respondents may have responded favorably to policies
passed on behalf of the wildlife but care less about ecosystems perhaps because
wildlife is intuitively more sentient than ecosystems. An additional issue was
relatively lower comprehension check passage for participants given no justification
and/or the conservation case. This may be explained by especially short vignettes
with brief explanations of the policy cases. We suggest a replication of this
experimental design with stronger treatments targeting specific forms of non-
anthropocentrism to include perhaps symbols, visualization, and/or videos (for
example images of roadkill for biocentrism or habitats destroyed by human
development for ecocentrism). Such a design might increase comprehension check
passage and better account for specific types of non-anthropocentrism.
Because this was an experiment with random assignment, the differences
between experimental groups do not depend on participants’characteristics.
However, individual characteristics like political partisanship (Feldman and Hart
2018) and personal values (Aasen and Vatn 2018) likely influence conservation
policy acceptability and may interact with ethical justification. Additionally,
political trust, specifically whether respondents believe the agent (in this case the
government) has the competence to implement policies on behalf of anthropocen-
tric or non-anthropocentric entities, likely influences how respondents interpret the
agent’s justification (Rydén et al. 2024). Political trust also affects attitudes towards
environmental expenditure (Fairbrother 2016) and willingness to make economic
sacrifices for the environment (Harring 2013). Contextual factors like social norms,
specifically whether the message comes from an ingroup or outgroup likely matters
as well (Cole et al. 2022). Further studies should examine if our experimental finding
about non-anthropocentric justification has meaningful external validity by
investigating who this justification specifically impacts and under which
circumstances.
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These results may not generalize to all contexts outside the survey condition.
Even though the Prolific platform consists of a more diverse group of people
compared to student samples (Douglas et al. 2023), our sample was overrepresented
by more educated, democrat identifying, and (sub)urban participants than the
general American public. To what extent these characteristics may limit the
generalizability of the present findings needs future investigation. Additionally,
these results are based on a sample of US participants that likely will not hold in
other cultures and countries with different relationships with nature. Future
research should replicate this study on more representative samples and expand to
contexts outside the US.
Conclusion
This study contributes to the policy acceptance literature by introducing a new
framing factor –non-anthropocentric ethical justification of conservation policy
proposals. Survey participants who received a vignette claiming that protected area
expansion or wildlife infrastructure policies were passed on behalf of “wildlife and
ecosystems”reported higher policy acceptability and perceptions that policies
should be passed on behalf of those non-anthropocentric entities. Unexpectantly,
participants who were not given a justification or told the policies were passed on
behalf of “humans and society”did not reveal similar or as favorable attitudes.
Non-anthropocentric and anthropocentric rationales are already being adopted
by policy makers like those who passed wildlife infrastructure bills in Utah and
Colorado and conservation expansion initiatives in Florida. Our results indicate that
the environmental ethical justifications appear to influence attitudes towards
conservation policies. Such findings indicate that policy makers and governments
might be able to directly justify conservation policies on behalf of non-
anthropocentrism rather than reformulating the policy’s aim into anthropocen-
trism. Norton and fellow pragmatists once argued that anthropocentric arguments
would expedite policy making because these justifications would lead to similar
enough environmental outcomes without alienating those who primarily valued
nature for instrumental human reasons (Norton 1995). However, this study
indicates that the public might be more accepting of policies passed on behalf of
nature, and thus, to utilize anthropocentric justifications for policies with obvious
conservation aims may not be necessary to garner public support.
Despite sampling and case selection limitations, we believe our study establishes
how non-anthropocentric ethical justifications could influence public opinion
towards conservation policies, warranting consideration and further research. Also,
further research should examine to what extent public support for these policies
may not necessarily lead to policy implementation due to resistance by key interest
groups and stakeholders. We suggest future research can extend the present design
to include more policy cases and treatments that could differentiate perspectives
within non-anthropocentrism such as biocentrism from ecocentrism and
pathocentric from sentientist.
Supplementary material. The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.
1017/S0143814X24000266.
18 Lauren Yehle et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X24000266 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Data availability statement. Replication materials are available in the Journal of Public Policy Dataverse at
https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E7MZQB and the OSF project page affiliated with the preregistration.
Acknowledgements. We thank commentators from the Center for Environmental Political Science Studies
(CEPS) at the University of Gothenburg, 2023 Swedish Area Group in Environmental Psychology
Conference, 2024 Nordic Environmental Social Science conference, and in particular Magnus Bergquist,
Sofia Axelsson, and Frederik Pfeiffer for valuable feedback on early drafts and pilot studies.
Funding statement. Funding provided by the Swedish Research council (Dnr 2016-02119, Dnr 2019-
03218, and 2020-03155) and Formas –the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (Dnr
2022-02842, Dnr 2019-02005, and Dnr 2019-00916).
Competing interests. The authors declare none.
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Cite this article: Yehle L, Michaelsen P, Harring N, and Jagers SC (2024). Conservation for nature and
wildlife’s sake: the effects of (non-)anthropocentric ethical justifications on policy acceptability. Journal of
Public Policy.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X24000266
Journal of Public Policy 23
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X24000266 Published online by Cambridge University Press
