Invasive species are an enduring, global problem that threatens biodiversity and significantly impacts economies and livelihoods. Despite the problems that they cause, public support for invasive species eradication policies determines if and when they get adopted and how quickly they are implemented. As a result, public support is crucial for determining the effectiveness of management. Understanding ways that management agencies can increase support for such policies can make policies more efficient and less controversial. Invasive species can be introduced through a variety of mechanisms, including direct human introduction, natural expansion from a neighboring area, or climate change-driven expansion. The different introduction pathways represent varying levels of responsibility that humans have for the presence of an invasive species. We sought to understand how attributed responsibility might influence support for invasive species eradication. We surveyed a representative sample of 2073 California residents to assess how support for eradication differed depending on the highlighted introduction pathway. Using an online panel survey, we measured support for eradication, level of environmental concern, and other demographic variables to understand what motivated support.
Results/Conclusions
We show that message frames that attribute responsibility for invasive species presence to climate change results in the least support from the public. Across all levels of environmental concern, connecting species invasions to climate change does not seem to be compelling. Human introduction frames resulted in the highest support, though for most levels of environmental concern, the human introduction and natural expansion frames were indistinguishable. Respondents did not seem to differentiate between human-caused introductions and naturally expanding populations of species, possibly because of the strong impacts that invasive species have on both human livelihoods and ecosystem function. Regardless, this suggests that managers need not spend limited time and resources on distinguishing how a species came to be in a place. We found that respondents’ ability to correctly identify a species as invasive were more likely to be supportive of eradication policies, suggesting that education programs identifying invasive species and their associated impacts may be compelling to the public.