Sébastien DESBUREAUX – (Mis)beliefs, new narratives, and preferences: An experiment on coexistence with wolves in France

Résumé : The natural recolonization of large carnivores like wolves generates an economic puzzle: although apex predators deliver large net-positive social surplus through ecosystem services, public support has eroded and is fragile. Our paper asks whether this erosion reflects an information bias in media supply, including an emphasis on dramatic storytelling. Applying Natural Language Processing to French press and TV segments over 18 months, we document a near-monopoly of cost narratives—delivered in both statistical and story-driven forms, with ecosystem services virtually absent. We model three videos on this media landscape, two around costs and one around benefits, and test their effect in an online experiment with 1,734 adults. We find that information-based and narrative-driven treatments are equally persuasive. We further show that switching from cost to benefit information strongly improves beliefs, including among respondents with initially anti-wolf attitudes. Doing so also shifts conjoint policy preferences toward larger wolf populations, without increasing donations to a pro-wolf NGO. Belief improvements persisted at one-month follow-up. These results indicate that information gaps constrain belief and preference formation, rather than other behavioral mechanisms.

Sébastien Desbureaux est Directeur de Recherche à INRAE et membre du Centre de l’Economie de l’Environnement à Montpellier (CEE-M).  Ses recherches explorent principalement les synergies et les antagonismes entre le bien-être humain et la conservation de la biodiversité, afin de mieux comprendre comment notre espèce peut coexister plus harmonieusement avec les autres êtres vivants. https://sites.google.com/view/sdesbureaux 

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