What Do People Associate With Birds? Exploring Social Representations in the German Public

Birds are integral to ecosystems and human wellbeing, acting as indicators of environmental changes and serving as flagship species for conservation. Given the critical state of biodiversity, it is essential to understand public attitudes toward birds and to survey the state of shared knowledge to bolster conservation efforts. This study examined the social representations of birds in terms of shared attitudes and knowledge within the German public. To this end, we analyzed data from three free word association tests from 578 participants (MAge = 48.85, SD = 16.96, ranging from 18 to 87 years; 51.7% women). First, respondents' associations with the prompt "bird" were categorized into cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions visualized through an association network created with Gephi. In addition, we recorded respondents' associations with (native) bird species. The analysis revealed that cognitive attitudes predominated, with the most frequent associations being "fly-freedom" and "fly-chirping" that reflected a blend of cognitive and positive affective attitudes. The Eurasian blackbird (Turdus merula) was identified as the most recognized (native) bird at the species level, whereas tits were the most often recognized at the family taxonomic level. Our findings underscore the necessity of leveraging the public's predominantly positive perspective to enhance communication and educational strategies in bird conservation to transform bird appreciation into active conservation behavior.