Exploring New Zealander's perception to novel pest control methods

New Zealand has the ambitious goal to be predator free by 2050, eradicating invasive species such as rats, stoats, possums, and wasps. Current control methods will not be sufficient to achieve this goal and success will rely... [ view full abstract ]

New Zealand has the ambitious goal to be predator free by 2050, eradicating invasive species such as rats, stoats, possums, and wasps. Current control methods will not be sufficient to achieve this goal and success will rely on novel pest control methods being developed. However, public acceptance of innovative technologies to control pest species in New Zealand has occasionally been dismissive and met with strong opposition. Our research uses pest wasps (Vespula species German & common wasps) and rats (Rattus spp.) as complementary case species to explore the degree (if any) of social acceptance (social license to operate) of novel technologies for wide-scale pest control. Building upon other research that explores social acceptability toward novel technologies (e.g., synthetic biology, nano technology, GMO food, stem cell research), we used quantitative and qualitative methods to develop a segmentation model of a representative sample of the New Zealand (n=4000). The segmentation model was based on the public views of novel technologies as they align to their environmental values, science knowledge, trust in science and institutions, current environmental and sustainable behaviours and demographics, general values, national identity, and demographics. Organisations committed to understanding public opinion and acceptance of (or lack of) novel pest control can use the segmentation as a starting point for public engagement. In the future, we will build upon the segmentation model, we will also test the effectiveness of different messages, aligned to different values of the segments, on their acceptance of novel technologies.