Introduction

Insects provide key ecosystem services for agricultural food production, most importantly pollination and pest control. While the public perception of bees, particularly honeybees (Apis mellifera), has improved over the last decades (Hall et al. 2020), many taxa that support food production by providing ecosystem services other than pollination such as predating on agricultural pests are still overlooked and comparatively understudied (Noriega et al. 2018).

Social wasps, such as yellowjackets, paper wasps and hornets, provide natural pest control by preying on agriculturally important pests (Southon et al. 2019; Prezoto et al. 2019; Schmack et al. 2021) and pollinate a diverse range of plant families by feeding on floral nectar (Brock et al. 2021). Social Wasps also disperse a variety of plant seeds and play an important role for organic matter decomposition (Brock et al. 2021). Despite their importance for ecosystem functioning and their contributions to agricultural food production, they are disliked by the public (Baker et al. 2020) and underrepresented in scientific research (Sumner et al. 2018). Many social wasp taxa, just like other insects, are furthermore declining due to habitat degradation, pesticide use, climate change and invasive species (Dejean et al. 2011, 2022).

Urban community gardens are important green spaces in the city, where people grow food, engage in environmental education, enhance their wellbeing, and support urban wildlife by providing food and nesting resources (Malberg et al. 2020; Saguin 2020). Gardens are also ideal spaces for social wasps because they often hold a multitude of human-made structures that wasp queens can start their nest in as well as a great diversity of insect prey and nectar-rich flowers (de Barros Alvarenga et al. 2010; Barbosa et al. 2020; Komonen et al. 2020). Despite the evidence that wasps effectively pollinate crops (Brock et al. 2021) and control pest insects in urban farms (Prezoto et al. 2019), wasps are perceived as unimportant for crop pollination and treated as pests (Baker et al. 2020; Burns et al. 2021). Many colonies are being removed from urban gardens either through nest relocation (if the garden can afford the service provided by relocation experts) or destruction (Nadolski 2013). Thus, peoples’ perception and feelings can influence conservation behavior towards uncharismatic and negatively connoted species such as wasps.

Sumner et al. (2018) conducted an online survey among members of the UK public to compare the publics´ opinion of bees and wasps. Their data showed that wasps in contrast to bees are universally disliked and that the publics´ understanding for ecosystem services provided by wasps is poor. Gardeners are more likely to perceive insects as beneficial and express positive emotions towards invertebrates than non-gardeners (Vanderstock et al. 2022). This creates potential for conservation, as gardeners influence the support of, but also the fight against, social wasps. Here, we conducted a survey in 30 urban community gardens in Berlin and Munich, Germany, to investigate gardeners´ perceptions of social wasps and the ecosystem functions they provide, and to test whether the perceptions of this group differ from the perceptions of the general public as described in Sumner et al. (2018). To explore differences between urban gardeners´ perceptions of wasps and other insects, we included taxa such as butterflies, wild bees, beetles, etc. and spiders in this survey. Specifically, we predicted that (a) gardeners perceive social wasps and their ecosystem functions as least beneficial for their garden compared to other insects and spiders, (b) gardeners like bees (bumblebees, honeybees, wild bees) and dislike wasps, and (c) that gardeners with high knowledge of wasps have more positive emotions towards wasps and are more willing to share their gardens with them than those that know less about wasps.

Methods

Online surveys are a common tool for studying the publics´ attitudes towards certain species of wildlife (see for example Naylor and Parsons 2018; Sumner et al. 2018; Rovers et al. 2019; Vlasák-Drücker et al. 2022). We used an online survey to reach a high number of gardeners in two German cities at the same time. We designed this online survey in German (SI Text S1) and distributed information signs (SI Fig. S1) with the QR-code leading to the survey in 30 urban community gardens in Berlin (15 gardens) and Munich (15 gardens). Additionally, we emailed the link to the survey to the garden managers. From May to October 2021, gardeners were asked to complete the online survey. We included other insect groups and spiders in our survey to avoid leading questions. Spiders were also added as they presumably share disliked traits such as “ugly”, “predators” and “dangerous” with wasps.

To test whether urban gardeners perceive social wasps and their ecosystem service as least beneficial for their garden, we asked people to assign numbers from 1 to 7 (with 1 being the most and 7 being the least beneficial insect) to insect groups (butterfly, wasp, wild bee, beetle, honeybee, bumblebee) and spiders (SI Text S1 Part B). Gardeners were allowed to assign the same number to multiple insect groups. We asked gardeners to explain their choices using an open-ended response option. Qualitative answers were coded by two different researchers who identified key phrases and double checked the codes (see SI Table S1 for coding examples) (Mayring & Frenzl, 2019). Coding of the open-ended responses resulted in seven reasons for the most beneficial (pollination, all have a function, pest control, seed dispersal, cool animal, honey, I don´t know) and nine reasons for the least beneficial (no function, inefficient pollinator, all have a function, predation, annoying, stings, not a cool animal, pest, I don´t know) taxa. To directly compare reasons for choosing the taxa that emerged as the respondents´ overall choice of the most and the least beneficial taxa, we created a subset of the open-responses and coded those.

To obtain a qualitative assessment of gardeners´ emotions towards bees and wasps and to test whether gardeners share a similar dislike for wasps as the general public as described in Sumner et al. (2018), we asked the questions, “What do you feel when you see or hear a wasp / bee?” (SI Text S1 Part E). Respondents were able to choose one or multiple of the following positive (curiosity, fascination, affection), negative (fear, anger, disgust, panic) and neutral (nothing) emotions. Because respondents were allowed to choose multiple feelings, the number of answers exceeded the number of total responses (141). Positive emotions received + 1, negative emotions received − 1 and neutral emotions received 0. We subtracted the sum of all negative emotions from the sum of all positive emotions to calculate wasp emotion scores for each respondent.

We asked three trivia questions regarding the ecology of social wasps (SI Text S1 Part C). Each correct answer received + 1, incorrect answers received 0, and the answer “wasps have no function” was penalized with − 1. Points were summed for each respondent to calculate individual wasp knowledge scores ranging from − 1 to 6. To quantitatively explore the relationship between wasp knowledge scores and the gardeners´ wasp emotion scores, we used a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s HSD test. We used Levene´s test to test for homogeneity of variances; variances were not significantly different from each other (p > 0.05).

To investigate gardeners´ willingness to share gardens with wasps, we asked them to disagree more or less strongly with the statement “If I could, I would keep wasps out of my garden” (SI Text S1 Part D). To quantitatively explore the relationship between wasp knowledge scores and the gardeners´ willingness to share their garden with wasps, we used ANOVA and Tukey’s HSD test. We used Levene´s test to test for homogeneity of variances; variances were not significantly different from each other (p > 0.05).

All analyses were performed in the R Environment (v 4.2.2, R Core Development Team).

Results

Overall, 141 gardeners participated in the online-survey. Of these responses, 122 were complete responses and used for further analysis. Wasp knowledge scores ranged from extremely low (−1) to very high (6). Wasp emotion scores ranged from − 4 (all negative emotions) to 3 (all positive emotions).

Gardeners perceive social wasps and their ecosystem services as least beneficial compared to other insect taxa and spiders

Wasps were ranked by urban gardeners as the least beneficial taxa in 27% of answers, followed by butterflies, spiders and beetles (Fig. 1b). Urban gardeners perceived wild bees, honeybees and bumblebees as the most beneficial insect groups, with wild bees being chosen as the most beneficial taxa in 61.5% of answers (Fig. 1a).

The most common reason for choosing a taxon as being most beneficial was because they provide pollination (73.6% of answers), followed by the reason that they all have a function (12% of answers) (Fig. 1c). The most common reasons for choosing taxa as the least beneficial was no function (19.5% of answers) and inefficient pollinators (17% of answers) (Fig. 1d).

In the subset where we focus on the respondents´ choice of the most and the least beneficial taxa, we found that the most common reasons for choosing wild bees as the most beneficial taxa was pollination (75% of answers) and they all have a function (12% of answers) (Fig. 1e). The most common reasons for choosing wasps as the least beneficial taxa was annoying (54.5% of answers) and sting (15.2% of answers) (Fig. 1f).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Gardeners´ perceptions of wasps and their ecosystem services compared to other insects and spiders. Presented are respondents´ choices of (a) the most beneficial taxa and (b) the least beneficial taxa for gardens, (c) their reasons for choosing the most beneficial and (d) their reason for choosing the least beneficial taxon, and (e) their reason for choosing wild bees as the most beneficial and (f) their reason for choosing wasps as the least beneficial taxon. Respondents were allowed to give multiple reasons. Bars indicate the percentage of answers. A selection of respondents´ open answers are presented as (g) quotes. Insect and spider icons in (a) and (b) were taken from Phylopic.org

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Gardeners like bees (bumblebees, honeybees, wild bees) and dislike wasps

We received 192 answers on gardeners´ emotions when seeing a bee. The majority of respondents reported positive emotions when seeing a bee (Fig. 2). Respondents´ most common feelings when seeing a bee were fascination (28.6% of answers) and affection (28.6% of answers), followed by curiosity (26% of answers) and nothing (13.5% of answers); fear and panic were uncommon feelings when seeing a bee (2.1% of answers, 1% of answers, respectively) and none of the respondents felt anger or disgust towards bees.

We received 202 answers on gardeners´ emotions when seeing a wasp. The most common feeling when seeing a wasp was fear (23.3% of answers), followed by curiosity (20.8% of answers) and fascination (15.8% of answers) (Fig. 2). In 13.9% of answers, respondents reported that they feel nothing when seeing a wasp. Respondents described strong negative emotions such as panic, anger (both 9% of answers) and disgust (4% of answers); they were 11 times more likely to experience fear and/or panic when seeing a wasp then when seeing a bee. Only in 3.5% of the answers did respondents feel affection when seeing a wasp.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Respondents´ emotions when seeing or hearing a bee (left side of the bar) and a wasp (right side of the bar). Horizontal bars show the number of responses for each emotion and taxon. Negative emotions are denoted in purple, positive emotions are denoted in orange, and neutral emotions are denoted in grey

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Gardeners with high wasp knowledge feel more positive towards wasps and are more willing to share their gardens with social wasps than gardeners with less knowledge of wasps

Respondents´ wasp emotion scores differed significantly with wasp knowledge scores (ANOVA, F = 2.488, P < 0.05) (Fig. 3). Tukey’s HSD test for multiple comparisons found that respondents´ emotion scores were significantly different between respondents with low (1) and respondents with high (5) knowledge scores (P = 0.005, 95% C.I. = −3.481, −0.376) and between respondents with medium (3) and respondents with low (1) knowledge scores (P = 0.016, 95% C.I. = 0.159, 2.737). Respondents´ willingness to share their gardens with wasps differed significantly among wasp knowledge score groups (ANOVA, F = 7.872, P < 0.001) (Fig. 4). The majority of respondents agreed (61.5%) with the statement If I could I would keep wasps out of my garden (SI Fig. S5). Tukey’s HSD test for multiple comparisons found that knowledge scores were significantly lower in gardeners who strongly agreed with this statement than in groups that agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement (P < 0.001, 95% C.I. = −2.103, −0.444; P = 0.003, 95% C.I. = −2.175, −0.322; P < 0.001, 95% C.I. = −2.698, −0.634, respectively).

Fig. 3
figure 3

Respondents´ emotions toward wasps (average wasp emotion score per knowledge score group) changes with their knowledge on wasps (wasp knowledge score). Dashed line indicates neutral emotions toward wasps, emotion scores left of the dashed line (yellow dots) indicate overall negative emotions and emotion scores right of the dashed line (purple dots) indicate overall positive emotions

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Fig. 4
figure 4

Differences in answers to the statement If I could I would keep wasps out of my garden explained by wasp knowledge scores. Untruncated violin plots visualize the distribution of the frequency of replies at certain wasp knowledge levels. Significant difference (Tukey HSD test) in knowledge scores between b and a, where the answer “strongly agree” was significantly more frequent among respondents with low wasp knowledge scores

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Discussion

Our results show that social wasps were the most disliked animals; their ecological functions were largely overlooked, which might explain why their ecological importance, i.e. for pest control is widely misunderstood. Our findings reflect those of Sumner et al. (2018) and demonstrate that wasps are also disliked by groups of the public where we would expect high levels of biophilia. Gardeners that were more knowledgeable about the ecology and function of wasps, showed more positive emotions towards them and were more willing to share their garden with wasps than respondents that knew little about wasps. Promoting positive interactions and improving peoples´ understanding of the ecological importance of social wasps as pest predators and pollinators may greatly improve the image of wasps and build an appreciation for these uncharismatic species and their conservation. While discussing the functions of species can be useful for engaging interest in conservation, it should not suggest that the right to exist is contingent on services to humans.

Pollination is a well-known and highly valued ecosystem service, but one which is mainly associated with bees and honey production (Austen et al. 2021; Vanderstock et al. 2022; Vlasák-Drücker et al. 2022). In contrast, pest control and the key role that predatory insects play in ecosystem functioning are largely overlooked (Sumner et al. 2018). Although, gardeners were expected to have a more positive perception of herbivore predators (wasps and spiders) and gardening is suggested to increase biophilia (Vanderstock et al. 2022), their answers reflect the publics´ general dislike for wasps as described by Sumner et al. (2018) and emphasize the misconception of the ecologic importance of “dangerous” and “ugly” insects and spiders. For example, one gardener answered “I can imagine that wasps are the least useful taxon because they are predators”. A shift towards working with those disliked beneficial insects instead of against them, could support the development of sustainable urban agriculture and future research should investigate the pest control potential of social wasps in agroecosystems to provide further evidence of their utility and overturn their poor image in the public.

Gardeners that were more knowledgeable about the ecology and function of wasps, showed more positive emotions towards them. However, Vlasák-Drücker et al. (2022) showed that knowledge alone did not render people in Germany more willing to donate for the conservation of a species, but that positive, affective associations with a species increased their willingness to donate. Although, in our study most gardeners reported fear and annoyance when noticing a wasp, some also reported curiosity and fascination. Thus, there is potential to build an appreciation for wasps and their ecosystem functions by relating to those positive emotions. Future work should explore the effect of positive human-wasp interactions (e.g. observations) on urban gardeners´ perception and it´s potential for overturning the poor image of wasps in the public.

Fear was the most dominant emotion related to wasps. Similarly, Dai et al. (2021) argue that fear of being stung is the main reason for disliking wasps among the Chinese public, despite the fact that in many Asian countries their larvae are an economically important delicacy and their nests are used for medicinal purposes (Sato et al. 2023). Just like wasps, honeybees sting when under stress and can cause allergic reactions that can lead to death (Feás et al. 2022). Yet gardeners´ emotions towards bees were dominated by affection and fascination. Haidt (2001) suggests that moral judgments are often the product of intuitive perceptions, with justifications emerging post hoc. Do we construct our attitudes around emotions (fear of sting) and use reason (no function) to justify our dislike for certain species (sensu Haidt 2001)?

In conclusion, negative perceptions of wasps were based on misconceptions about their ecological functions and biophobia. Thus, education and positive encounters have the potential to improve the poor image of wasps in the public and support their conservation. Species knowledge among both the public and scientists is crucial for conservation (Wilson and Tisdell 2005; Leandro et al. 2017); yet, research indicates that biases persist, resulting in the underrepresentation of less charismatic and lesser-known species in conservation efforts (Cruz and Grozinger 2023; Deacon et al. 2023). We argue for reflection about and rethinking of existing strategies, especially with important stakeholder groups such as gardeners, where conservation interventions may be best achieved through small scale habitat additions such as food and nesting resources and appropriate measures to avoid the destruction of nests. Educational and citizen science projects could bolster the knowledge about wasps and other uncharismatic insects and increase positive encounters with these taxa. Accessible identification tools and media exposure for underrepresented insects can also help rectify biases in conservation focus.