Testing branding techniques on species common names to improve their fundraising profile for conservation

In the search for new ways to bring attention to the conservation of neglected species, marketing is increasingly recognised as offering new insights. Brand creation frameworks provide guidelines to create names or symbols for products that will differentiate them from the competition. In this paper, we examine if species common names that follow these guidelines can improve their fundraising potential. Using a novel choice experiment format that employs a budget allocation task, we evaluate if species common names influence donor preferences, where participants were given real money to donate to the species of their choosing. We model the data collected, which is fractional response data, using a Hierarchical Bayesian Dirichlet regression. Our results indicate that while all attributes are positively related to making a donation, Appeal and Familiarity coefficients are statistically significant but Name is not. There were also no statistically significant interactions between Name and any of the socio-economic variables. Our results on the importance of Appeal and Familiarity follow past research but contradict past research on the importance of common names, although the latter looked at common names in isolation. This suggests that species traits should not be tested in isolation when trying to understand the drivers of donations to wildlife conservation, as some traits that may appear important when tested separately become comparatively irrelevant when placed in a more realistic context where respondents have to consider multiple species traits. Future research into the influence of common names should investigate the possible impact of name sentiment as well as whether names with geographic references increase support from donors from those areas.