Valuing the chances of survival of two distinct Eurasian lynx populations in Poland – Do people want to keep the doors open?

•It is the first study to evaluate carnivore protection in Central and Eastern Europe.•We examine preferences over lynx populations exposed to different extinction risks.•People prefer to invest more in the population that has the lowest survival chances.•We identify scale and preference heterogeneity in responses to the choice experiment.

This study investigates individuals' preferences toward protection programs aimed at increasing the chances of survival of the two distinct Eurasian lynx populations in Poland. Those two groups, the Lowland and the Carpathian population, are exposed to different risks of extinction as they have different numbers, different-sized areas of occupation and different migration possibilities. Using a discrete choice experiment we examine the influence of the initial degree of endangerment on the allocation of respondents' funds. The results show that people prefer to invest in the conservation of the lynx population, which has initially lower chances of survival. The main driver of respondents' choices seems to be loss aversion rather than the urge to invest in an option with an expected higher outcome. This observation can be interpreted as people trying to keep all the options – doors – open by devoting more funds to the more vulnerable population than to the more stable one. Employing a scale-extended latent class model allowed us to detect segments among individuals showing different types of response behavior, including a form of serial non-participation.