Investigating opportunities for transformative change in biodiversity conservation: from Big Data analytics to Gamification.

Introduction

Human actions are eroding biodiversity and consequently reducing the contributions nature provides to people. Research has thus far had a strong focus on investigating the direct drivers of biodiversity loss, such as land use change, and their impacts on biodiversity.

Research Gaps

However, we are still lacking information about how sociocultural, economic, and other indirect drivers affect these direct drivers and consequently biodiversity. A key research priority is to investigate how societal values of nature and human behaviour underpin these indirect and direct drivers and consequently affect the transformative potential for positive and durable changes to human relationships with nature of conservation actions.

Methodology

The project draws from the emerging field of conservation culturomics that takes advantage of digital data sources and methods to study human-nature interactions. It employs cutting-edge research methods, including:

1. Big Data analytics
2. Video games
3. Online social surveys

These methods aim to fill knowledge gaps at multiple scales.

Data Integration

By combining social media data and online traditional surveys, it will be possible to understand:

• Preferences for species
• Diverse values of biodiversity
• The sentiment of people experiencing nature

Behaviour Change Analysis

Multimodal analyses of videos and video games will be used to study the potential for behaviour change, including for large carnivore conservation in Europe. This will also help to understand the diverse motivations supporting pro-conservation behaviour.

Impact Assessment

Biodiversity footprint calculations and a novel framework for species risk assessment will allow exploring impacts of:

• International trade
• Culture
• Other indirect drivers on biodiversity

Prioritization of Conservation Actions

Large language models and spatial prioritization will help identify priority conservation actions and areas where they should be implemented.

Conclusion

When successful, the project will produce transformational knowledge on diverse perspectives and motivations for actions that can bring about change for biodiversity conservation.