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

a structured, attachment-focused psychotherapy, significantly improved social support of the study subjects, and the effect was lasting [20]. Another important finding of our study would be that some demographic factors, like sex, race, and residence, showed prominent effect modification on the mediation of social support in the association between attitude and willingness of biodiversity conservation. When per- forming stratified analysis by these factors, the mediation of social support was only statisti- cally significant in male, Han majority, and students who resided in townships or cities. Compared with ethnic minorities and students who resided in villages, those who were Han majority or resided in townships are generally in higher level of socioeconomic status (SES) [21]. Therefore, our findings may suggest that SES could be a prominent effect modifier in mediation of social support. Two previously published studies provided indirect evidence on this assumption as they identified that SES was significant moderator in the association between social support and health-related outcomes [22, 23]. However, why the mediation of social support is only significant in male students should be further investigated. Under any circumstance, these findings highlight subpopulations that should be focused on in boosting biodiversity conservation attitude and practice among Chinese university students. Although our study is by far the largest cross-sectional study in investigating attitude and

willingness of biodiversity conservation in Chinese university students, several limitations should be acknowledged. First, although we adopted probabilistic sampling method to choose study subjects, as all participants were students from a single university, the representativeness of our study sample to all Chinese university students is questionable. Second, because of the cross-sectional nature, the causal inference based on our study results cannot be reached. Future studies of more representative sample of Chinese students and longitudinal design should be done, to further corroborate our major findings. Supporting information S1 Data. (DOCX) Author Contributions Conceptualization: Yuan Zhang. Formal analysis: Yuan Zhang, Mo-Lin Hou, Chang-Qi Chen, Zhou-Yang Liao, Yun-Fang Guan, Yu-Lin Yuan, Yin Zhang. Funding acquisition: Yuan Zhang, Min-Yan Zhao, Tian-Tian Tang. Writing – original draft: Yuan Zhang, Min-Yan Zhao, Tian-Tian Tang. Writing – review & editing: Mo-Lin Hou, Chang-Qi Chen, Zhou-Yang Liao, Yun-Fang Guan, Yu-Lin Yuan, Yin Zhang. References 1. Pimm SL, Jenkins CN, Abell R, Brooks TM, Gittleman JL, Joppa LN, et al. The Biodiversity of Species and Their Rates of Extinction, Distribution, and Protection. Science, 2014; 344, 1246752. https://doi. org/10.1126/science.1246752 PMID: 24876501 2. Kideghesho JR, Røskaft E, Kaltenborn BP. Factors Influencing Conservation Attitudes of Local People in Western Serengeti, Tanzania. Biodivers. Conserv., 2006; 16, 2213–2230.

3. Sun X, Gao L, Ren H, Ye Y, Li A, Stafford-Smith M, et al. China’s Progress towards Sustainable Land Development and Ecological Civilization. Landsc. Ecol., 2018; 33, 1647–1653. PLOS ONE Attitude and willingness of bio-conservation in Chinese university students PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307510 July 19, 2024 8 / 9