Motivating children's cooperation to conserve forests

Forests are essential common-pool resources. Understanding children's and adolescents’ motivations for conservation is critical to improving conservation education. In 2 experiments, we investigated 1086 school-aged children and adolescents (6–16 years old) from the United States, China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Testing participants in groups, we assessed their motivation for conservation based on collective-risk common-pool goods games in which they were threatened with losing their endowment unless the group donation exceeded a threshold needed to maintain the forest. Extrinsic motivations, rather than intrinsic, tended to lead to successful cooperation to maintain a forest. Certainty of losing individual payoffs significantly boosted successful cooperative conservation efforts across cultures (success rates were 90.63% and 74.19% in the 2 risk-extrinsic conditions, and 43.75% in the control condition). In U.S. participants, 2 extrinsic incentives, priming discussions of the value of forests and delay of payoffs as punishment, also increased success of cooperative conservation (success rates were 97.22% and 76.92% in the 2 extrinsic-incentive conditions, and 29.19% and 30.77% in the 2 control conditions). Conservation simulations, like those we used, may allow educators to encourage forest protection by leading groups to experience successful cooperation and the extrinsic incentives needed to motivate forest conservation.     

Identifying opportunities for expert-mediated triangulation in monitoring wildlife trade on social media

Wildlife trade has rapidly expanded on social media platforms in recent years, offering an easy means for traders to access international markets. Investigating this trade activity poses a complex challenge to researchers seeking to understand online trade and moderators seeking to disrupt illicit and harmful activity. Current survey methods frequently rely on text-based searches and focus on posts in which the advertisement is explicit. However, such approaches risk overlooking a growing volume of relevant content, particularly outside social media groups. We used posts from pages promoting West African birds for trade as a case study to explore the availability of information for making inferences about trade activity on social media, specifically information indicating that trade activity was occurring or that could be used to infer trade routes. We recorded 400 posts from 12 pages that we inferred either promoted or facilitated wildlife trade, of which 19.7% were explicit advertisements and 23.8% contained taxa-related terms. In the remaining 341 posts, profile information was the most common indicator of trade activity, but a variety of indicators (e.g., images of birds in trade and trade enquiries) were identified across imagery, text, and comments. We identified multiple types of geographical information that could help infer trade routes and thus the likely legality of trade, although most were relatively rare and sometimes contradictory. Our findings suggest that triangulating multiple types of information from within, across, and beyond posts is vital for effectively identifying and interpreting wildlife trade content on social media. Therefore, were commend that expert-mediated triangulation should be integrated in and used alongside automated detection systems and moderating practices of social media companies.     

基于区块链的跨域环境合作治理研究

跨域环境合作治理是新时代生态文明体制改革的重要方向,也是国家区域发展战略的重要目标。传统跨域环境治理实践呈现"权威达标型治理"的运作逻辑,在取得区域环境质量改善的同时,难免存在"人工失灵""不稳定性""弱激励性"等局限困境。为此,本文建议,基于区块链"去中心性""强信任化""高共享化"等优势特征,新时代推进跨域环境合作治理应建立全域化环境信息系统,构建协商化合作组织平台,实施精准化联合防控行动,塑造共赢化生态发展格局。