Attitude and willingness of biodiversity conservation in Chinese university students: Associated factors and the mediation of social support

RESEARCH ARTICLE Attitude and willingness of biodiversity conservation in Chinese university students: Associated factors and the mediation of social support Yuan ZhangID1, Mo-Lin Hou1, Chang-Qi Chen1, Zhou-Yang Liao1, Yun-Fang Guan1, Yu- Lin Yuan1, Yin Zhang1, Min-Yan Zhao2*, Tian-Tian TangID1* 1 College of Biodiversity Conservation, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming, China, 2 Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China * zhaominyan@itpcas.ac.cn (MYZ); TiantianTang@swfu.edu.cn (TTT) Abstract In this cross-sectional study of 1475 Chinese university students, we explored associated factors of attitude and willingness of biodiversity conservation, analyzed the hypothesized mediation by social support in the association between attitude and willingness of biodiver- sity conservation. Multivariate logistic regression model revealed that major and social sup- port were prominently related to both attitude and willingness of biodiversity conservation. Besides, path model identified a statistically significant mediation by social support, sex, race, and family residence presented noticeable effect modification on the mediation of social support. These major findings suggest that intervention measures which aiming at enhancing social support could be considered for elevating attitude and willingness of biodi- versity conservation among Chinese university students. 1. Introduction Biodiversity is essential for the living of all life on earth, including humans. Nevertheless, cli-

mate change and human activities have been contributing to expedited loss of biological diver- sity [1]. Therefore, effective conservation of biodiversity is critical for human survival. Younger generations are main practitioners for future sustainable development, education in biodiversity conservation is important in shaping young people’s attitudes toward biodiversity conservation [2]. Although in the past three decades, tremendous efforts have been made by the Chinese government in ecological protection and environmental management [3], com- pared with many students in Western countries, a lack of formal education regarding environ- mental education in Chinese schools has been identified as an issue [4]. The Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) theory illustrates that the process of human behavior change can be divided into three phases: acquiring knowledge, generating attitudes, and performing practice [5]. After been proposed, the KAP theory has been widely used, espe- cially in the field of health-related behaviors [6]. For instance, some researchers used the KAP PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307510 July 19, 2024 1 / 9 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Zhang Y, Hou M-L, Chen C-Q, Liao Z-Y, Guan Y-F, Yuan Y-L, et al. (2024) Attitude and willingness of biodiversity conservation in Chinese university students: Associated factors and the mediation of social support. PLoS ONE 19(7): e0307510. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0307510 Editor: Hua Pang, Tianjin University, CHINA

Received: December 21, 2023 Accepted: July 7, 2024 Published: July 19, 2024 Copyright: © 2024 Zhang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Data cannot be shared publicly because of legal and ethical considerations to ensure confidentiality. Data are available from the Southwest Forestry University Data Access Committee (contact via xl@swfu.edu. cn) for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data. Funding: This study was funded by Scientific Research Fund project of Education Department of Yunnan Province (2023J0738), National Natural Science Foundation of China (32160296), Yunnan