Sentiment and attitudes toward offsetting and the biodiversity market in online media articles

Abstract

Biodiversity offsetting, a conservation approach to offset loss of habitat and ecosystem services, has been widely accepted and implemented in different legislative frameworks around the globe. I assigned sentiment scores (from −3 [very negative] to +3 [very positive]) to online news articles to examine public sentiment toward offsetting. I identified 86 pertinent articles published from 2013 to 2023 by web scraping online media outlets through keywords. I examined article content based on topics commonly associated in scientific literature with offsetting, such as risks or financial aspects. Most articles were from Australia (44%), 16% were from the United Kingdom, and 5% were from Colombia and Madagascar. Three distinct groups covered finances (n = 47), species, and social impacts of offsetting (n = 23) and offsetting frameworks (n = 16). Articles covering monetary and finance aspects had a lower predicted sentiment score (−0.72, 95% CI −0.98 to −0.47) than articles that covered new, alternative offsetting forms (−0.15, 95% CI −0.46 to 0.17), such as mitigation banking and credits. In articles focused on charismatic species and loss of livelihood, offsetting risk and social issues were associated with low sentiment scores (