Photos by Pavol Prokop.
By Pavol Prokop, Kristína Belzárová, and Ivana Čergeťová.
Engaging citizens in biodiversity conservation is crucial. However, achieving this goal becomes challenging when the focus is on plants, which people traditionally perceive as lifeless and uninteresting. We posited that understanding how people perceive plants in the affective domain, an aspect people often overlook, is essential. It is particularly unclear whether people have any emotional attachment to plants that could help foster positive attitudes toward them.
Our study reveals that individuals exhibit compassion towards plants experiencing water stress, akin to their compassion for abused animals. In contrast, non-living objects receive significantly lower compassion scores. Additionally, our experimental manipulation of perceived rarity demonstrates that individuals are more willing to pay for rare plants compared to common ones. We believe that our research opens the proverbial Pandora’s box, urging researchers to delve into the emotional connection between humans and plants, laying the groundwork for building a sustainable environment for the future.
Relational Thinking 