The Battle Against Shark-fin Soup

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Running head: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AGAINST SHARK-FIN

CONSUMPTION

1

The Effectiveness of Social Media Against Shark-Fin Consumption:

The Battle Against Shark-Fin Soup

Cai Yiming

U1130827K

CS2008 Term Paper

Nanyang Technological University

16th

April 2012


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THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AGAINST SHARK-FIN CONSUMPTION 2

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine if social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin

soup are truly effective in persuading the general public to stop consuming shark-fin soup.

With regards to the growing demand of shark-fin for consumption (Clarke, Milner-Gulland, &

Bjorndal, 2007), the shark finning industry have been increasing shark finning efforts (Clarke,

Milner-Gulland, & Bjorndal, 2007), which in turn has endangered the marine ecological system

and the threatened shark species to possible extinction (Ng, 2009).

However, Non-profit Organisations (NPOs) and wildlife conservation groups have taken to

campaigning for the banning of shark-fin soup in hope of curbing the demand for shark-fins in

the interest of dampening the shark finning trade. In addition, such groups and activist have also

targeted raising the awareness amongst general consumers of shark-fin soup to cull the demand

of shark-fin soup by consumers.

Through quantitative analysis of a designed field experiment, this study seeks to evaluate if

exposure to such campaigns targeted directly at consumers are effective in persuading them to:

1. Stop purchasing shark-fin soup for consumption2. Not consume shark-fin soup should the situation presents itself to the consumer.

Keywords: social media, effectiveness, persuasion, shark-fin


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Introduction

Considered a popular modern day delicacy of Chinese cuisine, shark-fin soup symbolises

wealth and societal status in Chinese communities around the world (Clarke, Milner-Gulland, &

Bjorndal, 2007). The rise of the Chinese economy over the past decade has brought about an

increasing demand for sharks soup (Clarke, Milner-Gulland, & Bjorndal, 2007), which as a

result, has inflated the demand for shark-fins in the global shark finning industry.

With the demand for shark-fin surging, shark finning is seen by fishermen as an

extremely lucrative and profitable trade; which has led to the exploitation of shark finning

(Clarke, Milner-Gulland, & Bjorndal, 2007). This exploitation of shark finning has led to the

critical endangerment of certain shark species and brought about negative implications to the

global marine ecosystem (Ng, 2010).

With the up to 73 million sharks being killed annually (Clarke, Milner-Gulland, &

Bjorndal, 2007), scientists predict that sharks may be hunted to extinction by the end of the next

decade1. In addition, the decline in the shark population would bring about an imbalance to the

marine ecosystem as sharks act as regulators of the marine ecosystem by controlling the

populations of other predatory species lower down the food chain.2

In retaliation to the rampant shark finning industry, NPOs, marine life conservation

groups and wildlife activist such as Shark savers, WildAid,Stop shark finningand Shark trust;

have taken their messages against the consumption of shark-fin to campaign, in the hope that the

ban of shark-fin soup in Chinese restaurants alongside raising the awareness amongst the general

public would effectively curb the demand for shark finning, and return the balance to the marine

ecosystem. NPOs and Activist around the world have adopted various campaigning styles,

ranging from hosting talks and events, staging peaceful demonstrations, broadcasting


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documentaries over mass media and most recently, through the use of social media defined as

user generated content; which has enabled them to converge their campaigning efforts whilst

catapulting their reach to a wider audience. For example Shark Savers uses its website and

Facebook page to share news, rally petition support, coordinate events, spread documented

videos to raise awareness and garner feedback from its audience.

Although certain campaigns have reaped tangible rewards for its cause Shark Baita

documentary by British chef Gordon Ramsey had successfully convinced Chinese restaurant

owners to stop selling shark-fin; this study will highlight certain conceptual flaws of such social

media campaigns, and will question if campaigning against shark-fin consumption through social

media is truly effective in getting the public to stop consuming shark-fin soup.

Hence, this study seeks to examine the effectiveness of social media campaigns against

shark-fin consumption; and attempts to identify the strengths and weaknesses of such campaigns,

in the interest of improving future campaigns and efforts in the cause.

This study will first review current literature on social medias effectiveness under

Synthesis of scholarship, followed by evaluating the findings with respect to this research topic

to define a working research question and hypothesis underEvaluation of current scholarship.

Following which, the research method will be introduced and evaluated in the Research design

section. A short Discussion segment will conclude the paper with suggestions for future studies.


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Synthesis of scholarship

With the movement against consuming shark-fin soup through social media only gaining

significance in the recent years, there has not been many published studies evaluating the

effectiveness of such campaigns in achieving its goals.

However the availability of studies evaluating the effectiveness of social media

(including other media platforms, such as the internet) in audience persuasion, advertising and

perception changing for social causes has rendered it selves valuable, by allowing the author to

draw the similarities to this research topic, providing insight and understanding potentially

similar situations and obstacles that this research might face. These studies proved useful in

shedding light on the current capabilities and set backs of social media as a campaigning tool,

and paved the way for the author to critically consider if the findings of the studies could be

applicable for the context of this research topic.

Hence the objective for this research behind the research topic was largely done to

intuitively analyse the results of previous studies that evaluated effectiveness on Internet

campaigning for social causes.

The advantages of social media

Giving a good background understand of the context, Miller (2010) states that social

networking sites represent a new medium through which people and organisations interact with

each other (p. 34). Amongst most Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs) and business today, social

media is seen as a tool providing a cost-effective means to promote and market your messages

as highlighted in a study by Miliana (2009). Post, messages, graphic advertisement and other


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multimedia means can be publically shared and made available for mass audience consumption,

thus spreading the campaign message of the NPOs.

A prevailing advantage that social media possess is that NPOs can look for similar

organizations on Facebook to connect with the people following them (Miller, 2010, p. 38)

where the value of social media lies in providing NPOs with a direct connection to their target

audience valuable for various reasons such as: direct interaction with the audience when

soliciting donations, recruiting members, publishing notifications or updates, spreading message

awareness, events support etc. On top of providing a platform to better present itself to the

public, the internet can also provide as a means for NPOs to reach out to like-minded groups,

gathering resources together to increase efficiency and effectiveness of their messages.

The persuasion effects of social media

Firstly, social media has to ability to persuade and convince audience through media

exposure and sharing of interpersonal experience. In a study done by Jong, Hyung, & Jae (2009),

it is stated that media exposure and interpersonal experiences are factors determining risk

perceptions, which translates into determining a consumers purchase intention. Inversely, it

could be hypothesised that should the media exposure and interpersonal experience be of

discouraging content, in turn increasing audience risk perceptions, it may lead to a fall in the

audiences purchase intention. Questioning if this argument would be applicable to the context of

the research topic, it can be noted that social media inherently possessed both qualities of media

exposure and interpersonal experiences - from its user generated content and capability to allow

interactivity between producers to consumers and amongst consumers. Therefore it would be

seemingly applicable to this research topic.


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The importance of interpersonal experience sharing in effectively persuading an audience

is also echoed in the study by Li & Zhan (2011), where the study states the strength of word-of-

mouth (WOM) as a marketing tool. In the context of social media, WOM generated by audiences

can exist not only offline (interpersonal communication) but online as well through the means

of sharing and recommendations (through the likes of Facebook and twitter). This increase in

channels through the use of social media allows WOM messages a greater extent of spreading

and in turn, positively affecting the persuasion levels of social campaigns. This was seconded in

Colliander & Dahlen (2011) calling Para-social interaction defined as interaction between

two parties with one party knowing more about the other party, a leveller for persuasion

effectiveness.

Another form of interpersonal experience in social media is for NPOs and activists to

have credible sources endorse their causes, as Colliander & Dahlen, (2011) terms it writer-

brand relationship where the audience associates the credibility of the source endorsing the

cause to the actual cause. Ultimately, such endorsement would also account for further publicity

effectiveness (Colliander & Dahlen, 2011)

Is it really working?

According to Millers study (2010), over 93% of the surveys respondents indicated that

they hold at least some interest in environmental issue and More than 36% of all the

respondents indicated that they follow an NPO through social media; which is loosely

applicable to NPOs and activities against the consumption of sharks fin, meaning that NPOs and

activist against the consumption of shark-fin have a potential to draw support for their cause

through social media campaigning.


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However there are views critical of findings that deem social media campaigning

effective. A study by Lavrakas, Mane, & Laszlo (2010) states that there are troubling aspects to

Internet advertising effectiveness (IAE) research, putting the validity of the findings of most

the studies question. This mainly comes from research companies settling for research methods

that have uncertain reliability and validity due to the unwillingness of clients to fund the

deployment of the superior research methods (Lavrakas, Mane, & Laszlo, 2010, p. 355). Such

critique serves to remind that conclusions and predictions of the effectiveness of social media

campaigning cannot be drawn solely from study findings especially in cross-context of research

topics. It would be best for this author to conduct a specific data collection to analyse the

effectiveness of anti-shark-fin consumption campaigns.

Room for improvement for NPOs using social media

Another insight that was highlighted in Millers (2010) study was that there were barriers

NPOs faced in embracing social media as a campaigning platform and that in some cases, NPOs

did not fully utilise social media to the best of its capability; and that there is still room for

improvement. This could imply that previous research and study on the effectiveness of

campaigning through social media could have been untrue reflections of the effectiveness it

could bring; again highlighting the inaccuracy of drawing conclusion of the effectiveness of

social media campaigning from previous studies.


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Relevance to study

With regards to the comprehensive review of current studies on the use of social media

by NPOs and activists, there is still a need to draw a deeper contextual understanding for the

context of this study. This is because shark-fin consumption, unlike the context of the other

studies reviewed, is largely brought about and influenced by traditions and customs. The practice

and modern day custom of consuming shark-fin soup in Chinese culture today has its unique

consumption patterns and habits that does not allow parallel comparisons to be made across the

other studies reviewed, in addition to the general analysis of the use social media for

campaigning purposes. The consumption patterns and habit unique to the context of shark-fin

soup will be discussed in the following section.


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Evaluation of current scholarship

From the review of current literature studied, it can be evaluated that social media

comprises of elements that are effective in persuading audiences to its cause. However the

specific level of effectiveness of social media campaigns cannot be concluded; especially so for

the topic of campaigns against shark-fin consumption, as none to the reviewed scholarly articles

had evaluated this specific topic. As such, this study has the opportunity of contributing to a field

of research that has yet been explicitly covered.

As also explained by the reviewed literature, NPOs and activists in some cases were not

fully utilising social media to the best of its capability. This provides the current study the option

of further examining how NPOs and activist use social media for their campaigning efforts and

understanding the possible reasons, should this study find that such social media campaigns have

been ineffective in it is objective.

More importantly, it would be crucial to also examine and evaluate social media

campaigns against shark-fin consumption directly. Considering the reach of social media to be

more extensive amongst the younger population then the older ones (Assael, 2005) whilst the

tradition of consuming shark-fin soup is stronger amongst the older population (Clarke, Milner-

Gulland, & Bjorndal, 2007), it would be interesting to question if such social media campaigns

against shark-fin consumption are tackling the root of the issue.

Another point to note is that there may be a flaw in social media campaigns directly

relating an individuals personal intention to consume shark-fin products and the demand for

shark-fin soup. It is more complex in truth to link the two variables with a direct cause and effect

relationship as the custom of eating shark-fin soup, practiced during celebratory events such as

marriages and birthday celebrations (Clarke, Milner-Gulland, & Bjorndal, 2007), is to have the


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event host cater the dining course for all of his or her guests - usually the extended family. As

such, it can be argued that a large percentage of the demand for shark-fin soup does not arise

from an individuals personal consumption, but from bulk orders during celebratory events

(Clarke, Milner-Gulland, & Bjorndal, 2007).What this means is that, even if an individual is

exposed and convinced by campaigns against purchasing and consuming shark-fin soup, he or

she may still be presented with the situation of being offered shark-fin soup in a family

gathering. This gives rise to the problem of individuals who may believe in the cause against

consuming shark-fin soup may continue to consume it because the environment continues to

present such situations to them.

Coupled with the preceding argument that social media has a wider outreach with

younger audiences, it could be seen that perhaps such social media campaigns might have been

advertising their messages to an audience that:

1) Are not the focal audience that are generating the demand for shark-fin consumption2) Will continually be presented the situation of having shark-fin soup served to themduring celebratory events

Hence this study will also attempt to examine if individuals who are convinced by social

media campaigns against shark-fin consumption would continue to consume shark-fin soup

should they be presented the situation.

Although it can be argued that the individuals intention to consume shark-fin when

presented with the situation may be independent of the true objective of such anti-shark-fin

consumption campaigns; the objective for this study is to simply test if the general public would


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continue to consume shark-fin soup when exposed to social media campaigns against shark-fin

consumption, with regards to the common social practices, and not to test if such social media

campaigns have been effective in saving sharks in the wild from rampant finning practices. The

findings could then signal to NPOs and activists whether they have been right to assume that

efforts in persuading consumers to ditch shark-fin soup will directly lead to a decline in demand

for shark-fin soup.

As such, the following research objectives have been defined:

Research Question:

Is exposure to campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup on social media effective in

getting the general public to stop consuming shark-fin soup?

Independent Variable:

Exposure to campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup on social media

Dependent Variable:

1. The intention to purchase shark-fin soup for consumption2. The intention to consume shark-fin soup when provided


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H1:

Exposure to social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup is effective in

persuading the general public against the purchasing of shark-fin soup for consumption.

H2:

Exposure to social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup is effective in

persuading the general public against the consumption of shark-fin soup should the situation

present itself to them.

H0:

Exposure to social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup is not effective in

persuading the general public against the consumption of shark-fin soup.


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Research Design

Method

As the crux of this study lies in the focus of quantitatively finding out whether social

media content is causing people to avoid shark-fin soup?, there is a need to explore the possible

casual relationship between social media and the intention to consume shark-fin soup. As

highlighted by Treadwell (2011), the need to explain casual relationships would be best reflected

in the use of an experiment to test the correlation between IV and DV. Hence, it would best serve

this study to design and conduct an experiment on randomly selected sample units representing

the general population to fulfil the research objectives as defined in the RQ, H1 and H2.

The use of surveys would be sufficient in collecting data from participants, however it is

of the criteria of this study to ensure that all participants are exposed (per-experiment or during

the experiment itself), such that participants would be possess competent understanding of the

subject matter. As such, instead of limiting the sample universe to participants who have been

previously exposed to social media content against the consumption of shark-fin soup; a

experiment will be conduct to expose all participants to such social media content, in the interest

of sampling from a wider and more accessible sample universe.

Alternative methods of research, such as interviews, provide in-depth insight into why

people would react to either avoiding sharks-fin soup or not. Although this would serve as a

good understanding and supplement insights to the effectiveness of social media in achieving its

goal, it is secondary to the question are people avoiding shark-fin soup.

Experiment details.

For the purpose of this study, a one-group field experiment will be designed as followed:


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R X D1

Where R denotes the random assignment of sample units chosen, X denotes the exposure

to IV and D1 denotes the data collection to be carried out after the exposure of IV to the

participants. Although a field experiment design is considerable less comprehensive than other

experiment methods available (Treadwell, 2011), such as the Solomon Four-Group design, Time

Series Analysis orFactorialdesigns (p. 151); it can be argued that a field experiment would be

sufficient as the post exposure action of data collection through the use of a survey would be

sufficiently effective in accumulating data to support or reject H1 and H2. This is because the

survey questions (refer to Appendix A) would directly question participants if their opinions on

DV1 and DV2 were caused by the IV; this differs from the post exposure methods as mentioned

by Treadwell (2011), whereby observations are conducted, which encompasses the consideration

for new and external IVs.

Sampling

Ideally, the sample should be reflective of the general public (with respect to Singapore).

As such, the ideal sample demographic would be to include participants of various ages, gender

and ethic background that would be similar to the population demographics of Singapore. Hence,

stratified random sampling would be preferred; with 16.8% of participants under the age of 15

years, 73.9% of participants within the age category of 15-64 years old and 9.3% of participants

of the age 65 years or older (Singstat, 2011). In addition, to improve external validity, there

should be 974 male participants for every 1000 female participants studied (Singstat, 2011), also

the ethnic composition of the sample would be made out of 74.1% Chinese, 13.4% Malays, 9.2

% Indians and a remaining 3.3% of other races (Singstat, 2011). The ideal sample profile should


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contain sample units with history of shark-fin soup consumption; and in addition, diverse

backgrounds such as education level and living location.

However, due to the limitations of resources (manpower, time available and remuneration

incentive for participants) for this study, systematic sampling will be employed. Participants

will be randomly selected from a list of the student population of the Wee Kim Wee School of

Communication and Information (WKWSCI), NTU. Such a list of students along with their

email contact information can be requested from the WKWSCI administrative office, subjected

to the approval the authorities of the school. All participants will receive a $2 remuneration for

participating in the study. The use of systematic sampling allows for efficient and random

selection of sample units (Treadwell, 2011), and will be further elaborated in segment pertaining

to data collection.

The ideal ethnic composition will be followed as closely as possible; because it can be

argued to be the most important demographics amongst the rest; since a huge majority of the

demand for shark-fin soup is generated by Chinese patrons (Clarke, Milner-Gulland, & Bjorndal,

2007). Although the sampling method differs in margin form the ideal, this study would accept

the data collected to reflect the general public while acknowledging a lower level of confidence

in the data collected.

Hence, to explicitly state the selection criteria for the study:

1. Participants invited will be students from WKWSCI2. Participants can be of any age and race3. Participants may or may not have previously viewed social media content against

the consumption of shark-fin soup

4. Participants must be new to the study


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Data collection

Participants will be randomly selected through a systematic categorisation of selecting

every nth person from categories of different ethnicities. E-mail invitation will be sent two weeks

in advance to selected participants to participate in a survey in WKWSCI. The study will be

conducted over a window of 3 days to allow participants the flexibility of attending the study

when they are available. The study will be conducted electronically in the computer labs of

WKWSCI and will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. The use of computer as the data

collection platform would directly allow this study to expose the participant to content on social

media that is against the consumption of shark-fin soup. Hence, participants will be directed to a

online social media website for content viewing before proceeding with the rest of the survey.

A cross-sectional survey will be conducted to capture the participants results at the point

of time when the study is conducted. Although the use of a cross-sectional survey may be less

reflective then longitudinal survey methods, it can be decided that this study does not view time

as a variable influencing the participants opinion. As such, the use of a cross-sectional data can

be justified (Treadwell, 2011).

The survey will be constructed in a funnel format, starting from general questions to

specific questions. Question types would include dichotomous questions, filter questions and

Likert scale questions.

For the use of this study, the social media content used will be Shark Savers Facebook

page (www.facebook.com/sharksavers). Participants viewing the content will be asked to view

short clips and articles pertaining to Shark Savers campaign message.


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Measurement

The levels of measurement that will be used in the survey are Nominal when

questioning participants background, and Interval through the use of the Likert scale in

questions asking the extent at which participants agree with the statements proposed in the

survey so as to measure DV1 and DV2.

Referring to Survey sample in Appendix A,

Survey question with nominal measurements are: 1, 2, 2.2, 5

Survey questions with ordinal measurements are: 2.1

Survey question with interval measurements are: 3, 8, 9, 10 & 11

Identifying the levels of measurement will help to define how the collected data can be

analysed to satisfy H1 and H2. Convergent construct validity was also achieve is the survey

questions by correlating the intention against consuming shark-fin soup with the consumption of

shark-fin soup harming marine ecosystems.

Ethics

To ensure that ethical considerations have been made to protect the participants of the

study, all participants will be briefed of the nature of the study and its objective before taking

part in the survey. Participants will be notified of the expected duration of the survey as part of

appropriately informing the participants of the study they will take part in.

Participants will also be tasked to sign a consent form before taking part in the survey, which

will highlight that their identity will remain anonymous in the publishing of the data and

findings. Should any participant feel uncomfortable when viewing content pertaining to shark


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finning or at any point of time during the survey, he or she may choose to opt out and not

complete the rest of the survey. Should they have any questions during or after the survey, they

may seek to clarify at any point of time.


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Discussion

Possibilities for data collected

Based on the questions from the survey form that participants will complete, the possible

outcomes of the data collected will emphasise the following trends:

1. Participants feel social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup willpersuade them against the consumption of shark-fin soup. (Survey QN 9, 10, 11)

This would go to show that social media has an undefined level of effectiveness in the

campaigning against shark-fin consumption. Data collected will further determine if H1

and H2 are supported. In addition, there would exist the opportunity for scholars to

critically examine the possibly flaws and perhaps individual components of social media

in future studies.

2. Participants do not feel that social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-finsoup will persuade you against the consumption of shark-fin soup (Survey QN 9, 10, 11).

This would indicated that H0 is supported, as a result, future studies could examine the

possibilities for the ineffectiveness of the use social media against shark-fin soup

consumption.

Personal predictions

This author predicts that data collected will reflect the disparity between the data

collected from participants who are Chinese or non-Chinese, based on his intuitive understanding

of the sample profile and cultural customs practiced.Should this be true, it would reflect that the

focus of social media campaigns at the society at large has been ineffective towards dampening


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the consumption of shark-fin soup. Future studies could perhaps look into the possibility of

streamlining social media efforts towards the global Chinese community.

Conclusion

Although this study can quantitatively define the effectiveness of social media against the

consumption of shark-fin soup, such a finding still remains distantly off tangent to visions of

NPOs and activists around the world. Much room remains in between the efforts of dampening

the demand for shark-fin and bringing about a fall in shark-finning activities. However,

continuous and consistent research and studying would play an integral part in bridging the gap.


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Reference

Assael, H. (2005). A demographic and psychological profile of heavy internet users and users by

type of internet usage.Journal of Advertising Research, 45(01), 93-123.

Clarke, S., Milner-Gulland, E. J., & Bjorndal, T. (2007). Social, economic and regulatory drivers

of the shark fin trade.Marine Resource Economics,22, 30532.

Colliander, J., & Dahlen, M. (2011). Following the fashionable friend: The power of social

Media.Journal of Advertising Research, 51(1), 313-321.

Giles, D.C. (2002). Parasocial interaction: A Review of the Literature and a Model for Future

Research,Media Psychology, 4(3), 279-305.

Jong, W. J., Hyung, S. L., & Jae, H. P. (2009). Roles of media exposure and interpersonal

experiences on country brand: The mediated risk perception model.Journal of Promotion

Management, 15,321339.

Lavrakas, P. J., Mane, S., & Laszlo, J. (2010). Does anyone really know if online ad campaigns

are working?: An evaluation of methods used to assess the effectiveness of advertising

on the internet.Journal of Advertising Research, 50(4), 344-374.

Li, J., & Zhan, L. J. (2011). Online persuasion: How the written word drives WOM.Journal of

Advertising Research, 51(1), 239-258.

Miliana, P. (2009). Tips for entering your nonprofit into the social media environment.

GuideStar. Retrieved from: http://www2.guidestar.org/rxa/news/articles/2009/tips-for-

entering- your-nonprofit-into-the-social-media-environment.aspx

Miller, D. (2011). Nonprofit organizations and the emerging potential of social media and

internet resources. SPNHA Review, 6(1), 34-52.


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Ng. A. M. (2009). Shark fisheries management and the sustainable seafood movement: A

possibility for sustainable shark-fin soup? Retrieved from:

http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/1036/Ng_A_Shark_FINAL.

pdf?sequence=1

Ng. T. (2010). The impact of seafood consumption on endangered marine species

on Hong Kong.International Journal of Environmental Science, 1(7), 2048 2085.

Singstat. (2011).Population trends. Retrieved from:

http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/popn/population2011.pdf

Treadwell, D. (2011).Introducing communication research: Paths of inquiry. Sage Publications,

Inc.


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Other References

1: Fight shark finning. Retrieved from: http://www.fightsharkfinning.com/#/fast-

facts/4530711658

2: Ocean sentry. Retrieved from: http://www.fightsharkfinning.com/#/fast-facts/4530711658


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THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AGAINST SHARK-FIN CONSUMPTION i

Appendix A

Data collection survey form (electronic)

1. What is your race?

__ Chinese__ Malay__ Indian__ Others

2. Have you eaten shark-fin soup before__Yes__No

If yes, please answer the following 2 questions:

2.1 How frequently do you consume shark-fin soup__1-3 times a month__3-6 times a month__More than 6 times a month

2.2 During the occasion of consuming shark-fin soup, which of the following occurs morefrequently?

__a. Purchase shark-fin soup (cooked or uncooked) for own consumption__b. Consuming shark-fin soup that was not purchased by yourself

3. How far do you agree that the consumption of shark-fin soup is harmful to maintaining a

balanced marine ecosystem?

| Strongly disagree | Disagree | Somewhat Disagree | Neutral | Somewhat Agree | Agree | Strongly Agree |

4. The high demand for shark-fin soup has brought about an alarming rate of shark finning thathas resulted in the endangering of many shark species, are you aware of this?

__Yes: proceed to Qn. 5__No: if no proceed to Qn. 7

5. If yes, from what sources did you find out about such information? You may choose morethan one

__Friends__Newspaper articles__TV documentaries__Radio advertisements__Social Media: Facebook/Twitter

6. Have you come across any social media campaigns against shark-fin consumption? E.G.Sharks savers Facebook page


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THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AGAINST SHARK-FIN CONSUMPTION ii

__Yes__No

7. Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs), wildlife activists and marine life conservation groups havebeen campaigning their messages through social media platforms in the hope of persuading

audiences to stop consuming shark-fin soup. Please proceed to view some of their social mediacampaign content by clicking on the link below and proceed on to the next question after you aredone.

www.facebook.com/sharksavers

8. How far you agree that social media campaigns are at effective at persuading its audience tostop consuming shark-fin soup?


8.1 If yes or no, why?

9. How far do you think social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup willpersuade you against the consumption of shark-fin soup?


10. How far do you think social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup willpersuade you against purchasing shark-fin soup?


In Chinese tradition, it is customary to consume shark-fin soup at celebratory events such asweddings and birthday celebrations. During such events, it is traditional that shark-fin soup isserved to the event guests. As such, most guests are presented the situation of being servedshark-fin soup regardless of preference of consuming shark-fin soup.

11. How far do you think social media campaigns against the consumption of shark-fin soup willdeter you from consuming shark-fin soup, should you be presented with the situation of beingserved shark-fin soup?


-End of survey-


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THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AGAINST SHARK-FIN CONSUMPTION i

Appendix B

Participant consent form

Consent form

You are asked to participate in a research study conducted by Cai Yiming from the Wee KimWee School at Nanyang Technological University as part of an academic research study. Yourparticipation is voluntary and you may withdraw at any time without penalty.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDYThe primary objective of this study is to analysis the effectiveness of social media campaignsagainst the consumption of shark-fin soup.

PROCEDURESYou will be asked to participate in a research experiment that will take approximately 15

minutes. In the experiment, background information regarding your profile and demographicswill be asked. You will then be asked to proceed to view selected social media content related toanti shark-fin consumption. You will then be asked a few questions based on your personalopinion on shark-fin consumption. The entire experiment will be conducted through the use ofthe computer in the WKWSCI TSN computer lab.The experiment conductor for the session will brief you in person of the objective and procedureof the experiment.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTSYou will be asked to view content of anti shark-fin consumption campaigns, which will entailvideo footage of shark finning. If you are uncomfortable completing the experiment, you may

withdraw at any time.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO SUBJECTS AND/OR TO SOCIETYFor yourself: You will gain further insight on the impacts of rapid shark finning fromparticipating in this study.To others: Your participation is important to the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication andInformation and scholarly community, to develop a better understanding of the effectiveness ofsocial media as a tool for activists against the consumption of shark-fin soup.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATIONThere is a $2 remuneration incentive for participation in this study, collectable on completion ofthe research study experiment.

PARTICIPANT ANONYMITYAny information that is obtained in connection with this study will remain anonymous. Whenthe results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no information will betagged to your identity. Data will be reported only in aggregate form and will only includeparticipant demographics.


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THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AGAINST SHARK-FIN CONSUMPTION ii

IDENTIFICATION OF INVESTIGATORSIf you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Cai Yimingat 6790 5833.

CONSENT OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT

I agree to participate in this study. I have been given a copy of this form to complete and submitelectronically.

Name of participant: __________________________Matric number: ______________________________ Date: ____________

Documents

The Battle Against Shark-fin Soup