Does animal charisma influence conservation funding for vertebrate species under the US Endangered Species Act?

摘要

The US federal government spent 6 billion dollars to protect endangered species in 2013. The previous studies have shown that federal funding allocated under the Endangered Species Act is not necessarily based on the priority a species has been assigned by the Fish and Wildlife Service. This paper asks whether this continues to be the case using more recent data from 2013. It analyzes what factors affect total species funding by various federal agencies under the Endangered Species Act, and particularly examines the role of animal charisma using the number of Google results per species as a proxy. Results show that, while federal priority ranking had no effect on funding, charisma had a significant effect, suggesting biased funding for some species of animals.