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A good deal of research has recently focused on people's commitment to biodiversity conservation by investigating their “willingness-to-pay” (WTP). Because of the public's self-reported preferences for species that are more charismatic or similar to humans, conservation programs are often biased toward these species. Our study aimed to explore the determinants of WTP among 10066 participants in a zoo conservation program. The program aims to raise money to support conservation programs and involves donating a sum of money to “adopt” an animal in the zoo. We explored whether participants were influenced by particular scientific characteristics of the animal (IUCN conservation status and phylogenetic distance from humans) or by more affect-related characteristics, such as the charisma of the animal. We found that participants did not choose an animal to adopt because of the endangered status of the …