Watching TV good for planet: Research

According to new research published in the Annals of Botany by Oxford University Press, watching nature documentaries increases people's interest in plants, potentially leading to involvement in botany and ecology.

40 per cent of plant species are on the verge of extinction. Plants that do not immediately benefit people are especially vulnerable. Humans sometimes fail to realise the significance of many plants due to a cognitive bias known as "plant blindness" or "plant awareness disparity." While humans are often worried about endangered animals, problems with plants are more difficult to identify and resolve. Plants, for example, get less than 4 per cent of federal support for endangered species in the United States, although accounting for 57 per cent of the list.

Researchers here noted that in the past several natural history productions, including Planet Earth II, Blue Planet II, Seven Worlds, and One Planet, made viewers much more aware of the animals on the shows. While scientists cannot draw a clear link between such TV shows and conservation efforts, nature documentaries provide a direct way to reach mass audiences and engage them.

Here, the researchers investigated whether nature documentaries can promote plant awareness, which may ultimately increase audience engagement with plant conservation programs. They focused on Green Planet, a 2022 BBC documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough. The show, watched by nearly 5 million people in the United Kingdom, featured a diversity of plant species, highlighting vegetation from tropical rainforests, aquatic environments, seasonal lands, deserts, and urban spaces. The program also addressed environmental concerns directly, examining the dangers of invasive monocultures and deforestation.

The researchers measured whether Green Planet drove interest in the plants by exploring people's online behaviour around the time of the broadcast. First, they noted the species that appeared on the show and the time each one appeared on-screen. Then they extracted Google Trends and Wikipedia page hits for those same species before and after the episodes of the documentary aired.

The researchers here found a substantial effect of Green Planet on viewers' awareness and interest in the portrayed plant species. Some 28.1 per cent of search terms representing plants mentioned in the BBC documentary had peak popularity in the UK, measured using Google Trends, the week after the broadcast of the relevant episode. Wikipedia data showed this as well. Almost a third (31.3 per cent) of the Wikipedia pages related to plants mentioned in Green Planet showed increased visits the week after the broadcast. The investigators also note that people were more likely to do online searches for plants that enjoyed more screen time on Green Planet.

"I think that increasing public awareness of plants is essential and fascinating," said the paper's lead author, Joanna Kacprzyk. "In this study, we show that nature documentaries can increase plant awareness among the audience. Our results also suggest that the viewers found certain plant species particularly captivating. These plants could be used for promoting plant conservation efforts and counteracting the alarming loss of plant biodiversity."