Public Views on Conservation-Development Trade-offs

Abstract Decisions about land use often require difficult choices about whether to prioritise protecting wildlife or supporting human development. Understanding how the public navigates such trade-offs is essential to developing effective and equitable policy responses. Using a nationally representative UK survey experiment (N = 976), along with two pilot experiments with US-based participants (N = 946), we found that people strongly prefer preserving existing habitats or human land uses over change.