Ari Hoffman
Research Mentor(s): Thais Vasconcelos
Mentor Department: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Authors:
Session: Session 6 (3:00pm – 3:50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 78
Abstract
Despite plants covering 80% of the terrestrial environment, people tend to be unaware, not appreciate, or know much about the plants compared to animals. This phenomenon is termed Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD, previously named plant blindness). The term plant blindness was developed by Wandersee and Schusslerin (1998) and is defined as “the inability to see or notice plants in one’s own environment– leading to a: inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs; to appreciate the aesthetic and unique features of lifeforms belonging to the plant kingdom; and the misguided, anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals, leading to the erroneous conclusion that they are unworthy of human considerationâ€. Prior research on the topic has revealed that this phenomena is one of the main causes of modern anthropogenic plant extinction and endangerment and that improving people’s knowledge and perception of plants is correlated with increased success of plant conservation policies. Hence, our research focuses on measuring and evaluating the level of plant awareness disparity in South East Michigan by conducting a survey based on the plant awareness disparity index created by Kathryn Parsley in 2020. We hypothesize that the subjects gender influences their perceptions of plants, since cultural values attached to gender emphasize different aspects of plant knowledge and perception. Additionally, we expect that there’s a strong positive correlation between education and perception of plants as living organisms and part of the ecosystem. Once we establish the baseline PAD, we can test different methods to improve plant awareness disparity in the region. The survey included likert scale questions to evaluate the four parts of this index: Attention, Attitude, Knowledge, and Relative Interest in plants. We also utilized true/false questions, demographic questions including: age, gender, county of residence, level of education, as well as qualitative questions. At the time of submission of this abstract, we have received 121 responses and we observed a preference for animals over plants and a high awareness of plants in the environment. Data analysis of the PAD scores for males versus non-males revealed p-values <0.05 for attention, awareness, and interest. This suggests that males have low plant awareness disparity in comparison to non-males, demonstrating lower awareness, attention and relative interest towards plants. However, the p-value for knowledge was greater than 0.05, at 0.067, indicating that the difference between males and non-males is not highly significant, and could be simply due to chance. Further analysis of the differences between the genders suggest that awareness, attention and interest are driving factors in the differences in PAD scores. Data analysis of PAD score for low education (highschool diploma or GED equivalent and associate degree) and high education (some college and beyond) revealed a p-score of less than 0.05 for awareness, with p-values greater than 0.05 for all other categories. This reveals that awareness is the driving force of the differences in PAD scores between high and low education groups. Overall, the commonality between PAD scores across gender and education in Southeast Michigan is awareness. This can be attributed to a myriad of factors, including biological and cultural factors, that will be investigated in the next steps of this project.
