The global illegal wildlife trade directly threatens biodiversity and leads to disease outbreaks and epidemics. In order to avoid the loss of endangered species and ensure public health security, it is necessary to intervene in illegal wildlife trade and promote public awareness of the need for wildlife conservation. Anthropomorphism is a basic and common psychological process in humans that plays a crucial role in determining how a person interacts with other non-human agents. Previous research indicates that anthropomorphizing nature entities through metaphors could increase individual behavioral intention of wildlife conservation. However, relatively little is known about the mechanism by which anthropomorphism influences behavioral intention and whether social context affects the effect of anthropomorphism. This research investigated the impact of negative emotions associated with a pandemic situation on the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies for wildlife conservation across two experimental studies. Experiment 1 recruited 245 college students online and asked them to read a combination of texts and pictures as anthropomorphic materials. The results indicated that anthropomorphic materials could increase participants’ empathy and decrease their wildlife product consumption intention. Experiment 2 recruited 140 college students online and they were required to read the same materials as experiment 1 after watching a video related to epidemics. The results showed that the effect of wildlife anthropomorphization vanished if participants’ negative emotion was aroused by the video. The present research provides experimental evidence that anthropomorphic strategies would be useful for boosting public support for wildlife conservation. However, policymakers and conservation organizations must be careful about the negative effects of the pandemic context, as the negative emotions produced by it seems to weaken the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies.

ChatGPT, a representative of the new generation of generative artificial intelligence (AI), has garnered widespread attention due to its extraordinary natural language processing capabilities. This study examined ChatGPT's environmental value orientations and ecological worldview within the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory framework and compared these findings with the perceptions and self-assessments of 300 Chinese respondents. The results indicate that ChatGPT exhibits a significant pro-environmental orientation, although differences exist between its orientations and individual predictions of its environmental stance. The study provides theoretical support for the application of next-generation AI in environmental education and advocacy, contributes new evidence to the discourse on human-machine value alignment, and offers insights into human-AI collaboration in environmental protection.