Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Motivations for the use and consumption of wildlife products
AU - Thomas-Walters, Laura
AU - Hinsley, Amy
AU - Bergin, Daniel
AU - Burgess, Gayle
AU - Doughty, Hunter
AU - Eppel, Sara
AU - MacFarlane, Douglas
AU - Meijer, Wander
AU - Lee, Tien Ming
AU - Phelps, Jacob
AU - Smith, Robert J.
AU - Wan, Anita K. Y.
AU - Verissimo, Diogo
PY - 2021/4/30
Y1 - 2021/4/30
N2 - The dominant approach to combating the illegal wildlife trade has traditionally been to restrict the supply of wildlife products. Yet conservationists increasingly recognise the importance of implementing demand‐side interventions that target the end consumers in the trade chain. Their aim is to curb the consumption of wildlife or shift consumption to more sustainable alternatives. However, there are still considerable knowledge gaps in our understanding of the diversity of consumer motivations in the context of illegal wildlife trade, which includes hundreds of thousands of species, different uses, and diverse contexts. We developed a typology of common motivations held by wildlife consumers that can be used to inform conservation interventions, based upon consultation with multiple experts from a diversity of backgrounds, nationalities, and focal taxa. We identified five main motivational categories for wildlife use: experiential, social, functional, financial, and spiritual, each containing sub‐categories. This framework is intended to facilitate more nuanced approaches to demand reduction, such as the tailoring of interventions — whether behaviour change campaigns, enforcement efforts, or incentive programmes — to the specific context in which they will be used. It is an important step towards producing a more systematic approach to designing demand reduction interventions that are more likely to succeed.
AB - The dominant approach to combating the illegal wildlife trade has traditionally been to restrict the supply of wildlife products. Yet conservationists increasingly recognise the importance of implementing demand‐side interventions that target the end consumers in the trade chain. Their aim is to curb the consumption of wildlife or shift consumption to more sustainable alternatives. However, there are still considerable knowledge gaps in our understanding of the diversity of consumer motivations in the context of illegal wildlife trade, which includes hundreds of thousands of species, different uses, and diverse contexts. We developed a typology of common motivations held by wildlife consumers that can be used to inform conservation interventions, based upon consultation with multiple experts from a diversity of backgrounds, nationalities, and focal taxa. We identified five main motivational categories for wildlife use: experiential, social, functional, financial, and spiritual, each containing sub‐categories. This framework is intended to facilitate more nuanced approaches to demand reduction, such as the tailoring of interventions — whether behaviour change campaigns, enforcement efforts, or incentive programmes — to the specific context in which they will be used. It is an important step towards producing a more systematic approach to designing demand reduction interventions that are more likely to succeed.
KW - behaviour change
KW - Conservation social science
KW - consumer research
KW - demand reduction
KW - illegal wildlife trade
U2 - 10.1111/cobi.13578
DO - 10.1111/cobi.13578
M3 - Journal article
VL - 35
SP - 483
EP - 491
JO - Conservation Biology
JF - Conservation Biology
SN - 0888-8892
IS - 2
ER -