Promoting Waterbird Conservation Behavior: The Effects of Internet Memes and Co-Creation Engagement on Biodiversity-Led Sustainability

Waterbird plays a vital role in maintaining ecosystem services and serves as a bioindicator of ecological conditions. However, people are not fully aware of the benefits waterbirds bring to ecosystem and how biodiversity conservation contributes to sustainability. This study aims to promote waterbird conservation behavior by using participatory internet memes. The internet memes feature humor and participatory culture, and they have been used to promote environmental campaigns. This study explores how co-creation engagement interacts with different types of memes regarding the online civic engagement in an animal conservation campaign and the underlying mechanisms in that process. A 3 (meme types: high humor meme without text vs. low humor meme without text vs. typical high humor meme with text) X 2 (engagement: co-creation engagement vs. non-co-creation engagement) between subject online experiment was used in this study. The results showed three causal routes—absorption, perceived humor, and perceived cuteness—that mediated the effect between high humor memes and online civic engagement. Furthermore, this study revealed under what circumstance low humor memes are effective in promoting civic engagement in environmental communication.