Communicating toward collaboration: impact of strategic messaging on landowner beliefs and behavior toward endangered species conservation

In the United States, landowners own significant proportions of endangered species habitat; therefore, success of endangered species conservation (ESC) initiatives depends on collaboration between ESC agencies and private landowners. Voluntary Incentive Programs (VIPs) are ESC initiatives used to increase collaboration, but deficient and untailored communications between landowners and ESC agencies may reduce effectiveness. Strategies to bridge communicative gaps are not well-identified. We used an exploratory message experiment within a survey of east-Texas landowners to assess the impact of experimental messages on beliefs and behavioral intention toward ESC and VIPs for the endangered Houston toad. Results suggest that messages using general conservation content and normative framing may align with landowner values and increase positivity toward ESC. Where rural knowledge gaps exist regarding VIPs, communications leveraging socio-cultural norms of landscape-scale stewardship as common ground between programs and landowners may prevent negative psychological associations between endangered species VIPs and impacted individual rights.