SEE PEER REVIEW

INTRO:

This is a questionnaire study on human environmental philantrophic behaviour asking if people with sertain characteristics are more likely to donate money or time. 

MERITS:

The questions and the results of the study are well explained and it seems the conclusions follow from the results.

CRITIQUE:

Methods of the study are referred to very shortly by a statement that this is a survey. 

DISCUSSION:

This was an interesting abstract that is well worth to be presented in the ECCB. This type of 'conservation sosiological' research is valuable if we want to improve the effectiveness of conservation campaigns.

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INTRO:

This presentation proposes to better understand the profiles of potential donors (in time or money) to biodiversity conservation organisations. The authors show the heterogenity of all the people interested in such donations, and propose to specify more precisely the future marketing campaigns to dedicated targets.

MERITS:

This paper underlines the heterogeneoty of potential environmental philotranpists. The results can be used by environmental NGO and other structures to provide appropriate messages to specific targets. This is very important to foster conservation in practice.

CRITIQUE:

The results presented here are said to have been collected through surveys among "potential donors interested in biodiversituy conservation". More details could help understanding: what kind of surveys (questionnaire survey, I suppose)? how many people? how were the people selected as being "potential donors in biodiversity conservation"? Why did the survey not concern other people as control group, such as potential donors to other issues, or people without any interest in philanthropic engagement ?

DISCUSSION:

I propose the authors to detail a bit more the methodology they used to achieve their results. In addition, as all ECCB participants may be not familiar with scales such as environmental values or concern, I propose the autors to explain the concepts they refer to in their presentation.

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INTRO:

With this study authors would like to investigate environmental philanthropic behavior that has been understudied despite its importance for conservation organizations. A survey was administered to investigate environmental philanthropic behavior through possible connections with awareness of environmental consequences, materialism, and other variables. Therefore, biospheric and egoistic concerns were found to be positively related to philanthropic behaviors. Moreover, materialism was associated with charismatic species when participants were asked to allocate a 10c gift to one of five real donation targets. The results of this study highlight the diverse connections of variables with philanthropic behavior and can help in targetting audience and goals of conservation marketing campaigns.

MERITS:

The object of the study is topical and interesting for its potential applications in conservation campaigns. Interdisciplinary studies in conservation are now indisputable and conservation science should take all possible tools from marketing and the social sciences to achieve its goals. Authors choose good research variables to investigate the environmental philanthropic behavior and the inclusion of five real donation targets in the survey is an efficient dodge of collect data.

CRITIQUE:

In my opinion, some details, useful for the readers, could be included in the abstract. For example, the number of potential donors that answered to the survey, the way these donors were selected and some details about the survey and the statistical texts used. 

Another critical point could be the fact that the relations that had been found between environmental philanthropic behaviors and some variables are reported as motivations without explaining how authors identified the causal relation.

DISCUSSION:

This study highlights a gap and promotes new insights. Interdisciplinary studies are useful in conservation science because of the complex frame in which it works and conservation scientists should take advantage of all possible different tools provided by marketing and social sciences. The associations found by the authors can inspire improvements in conservation campaigns, for example, to target their audience or select donation targets. The results presented are a starting point for new studies that will investigate other variables connected with environmental philanthropic behavior and will identify conditional and moderation processes within the variables. These steps can also be taken as a suggestion by the authors to improve their research. Identifying how and when the different variables are associated with environmental philanthropic behavior can provide new important details that can be used in conservation marketing.