I am proud of having been part of the working group that put together the Social Marketing Statement of Ethics, which lays out key principles to be observed in the design of behaviour change. This has now been approved by the International Social Marketing Association and its regional affiliates given this document global klout in … [Read more…]
The presentation I gave at the fantastic Human-Wildlife Conflict and coexistence is now online! A summary of the findings can be found below: This study looked at whether a natural history film about elephants, called The Elephant Queen, could make communities living near elephants more tolerant of conflicts with them. The researchers surveyed people before … [Read more…]
The first edition of the IUCN’s Guidelines on human-wildlife conflict and coexistence have just been released! This is a labour of love that has taken a team of 40-odd authors several years to put together. I was proud to lead the chapter on behaviour change and co-author the one focused on impact evaluation. Have a … [Read more…]
Here is the new video abstract for the paper: Conservation fundraising: Evidence from social media and traditional mail field experiments. We compared three types of message frames (simple, seed money, and ecological). We found that the seed money frame, which emphasizes the amount already donated, increased the number of donors, whereas the ecological frame, which … [Read more…]
Movies have a great deal of influence in our lives. Whether you like to follow the works of a particular director, throw yourself whole-heartedly into cosplay, or just enjoy going to the flicks on a Friday night, most of us have some sort of relationship with the silver screen. But how far does the influence … [Read more…]
We made the cover of Current Conservation! A great feature article entitled “The second extinction of forgotten species” covering our paper on “Societal extinction of species” published a few months back. The idea of “societal extinction,” which is when a species disappears from collective memory and knowledge. This can occur in addition to biological extinction, … [Read more…]
The 15th Conference of the Parties of the Covention for Biological Diversity. also known as COP 15 is starting in the Canadian city of Montreal. I am about to get moving there (Oxford posted about it) to talk about the Nature Attitude Tracker, a platform that uses mass media and social media data to understand … [Read more…]
A new publication just dropped where we try to understand why ivory trade in Japan has reduced drastically in the last few decades. It turns out it has very much to do with how complex the world is and not so much to do with conservation. Read all about in the article in The Conversation
I am very excited to be starting my stint as Thompson Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan Flint! In this role I will be giving a keynote lecture as part of Sustainability Week as well as interacting with students across a number of modules such as ecology, wildlife biology and sustainability more broadly. I … [Read more…]
I recently wrote a short summary of a review we published recently (more on that soon) for the excellent blog Please keep to the path! See below.. In a nutshell: When it comes to looking at changing actual behaviour to conserve the environment the evidence base is limited as most studies do not measure actual … [Read more…]