The Public’s Ignorance

Being charismatic can often come with a price; ironically, the label of charismatic fauna could have partially contributed to the decline of these species. 

With the exception of certain species (tigers, pandas and polar bears) who have successfully benefited from communication of their endangerment status to the public, the predicament of many other charismatic species is further amplified by the fact that the public are unaware of these threats, due to a perceptual bias introduced by product marketing and intensive use of charismatic fauna as flagship species. 

The effect of having the faces of these endangered charismatic animals plastered everywhere (posters, tees, books, even pillows!), unbeknownst to us, is large and impactful, in a paradoxical way — the omnipresence of these animals in marketing and in our culture (“virtual populations”) leads to the erroneous association of these animals with abundance.

The presence of these “virtual populations” of endangered species everywhere in our cultures, leads to an overrepresentation effect that promotes a perception of abundance in the public, as demonstrated by the figure on the left.

Through the intensive usage of these appealing species in marketing and product design, companies can potentially gain a competitive advantage and profit from the faces of these charismatic animals. If this profit does not find a way back to support the conservation of real populations of species, there would exist a competition between virtual and real populations of species, which could unintentionally contribute to the decline of these charismatic species through the effect of false abundance as mentioned above.

This shows us that the intensive usage of charismatic species as flagship species can actually lead to their demise, if not marketed together with sufficient information about their endangerment and risk of extinction, by warping our perception of their abundance.