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…]
Laura Thomas-Walters, University of Kent; Bob Smith, University of Kent, and Diogo Veríssimo, University of Oxford Conservationists have been working for decades to save species such as pangolins and rhinos from illegal hunting and trading. And, with fears that the coronavirus pandemic originated from the wildlife trade, there’s never been more pressure to find solutions. … [Read more…]
It’s been a while since my last post. And that is because I became a dad last August! These last months have been a wonderful whirlwind of smiles, diapers and sleepless nights and I can’t wait to see what comes next! Looking back at 2019 there are two reviews published in 2019 I would like … [Read more…]
I was lucky to be part of the last episode of the latest episode of the BBC’s Podcast “Costing the Earth“, which is dedicated to the impact of Chinese Traditional Medicine on Wildlife Trade. I talked about the potential impacts of the expansion of the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine around the world and the … [Read more…]
EXTRA! EXTRA! Just out in the journal Conservation Biology is a review of of demand reduction interventions for wildlife trade products. My co-author Anita Wan and I reviewed more than 200 campaigns and look at they were distributed through time, space and in terms of biological groups (see below). We also looked at what information … [Read more…]
I had the change to talk to Mongabay.com about the importance of social science in conservation , and more specifically about the use of marketing techniques to influence human behaviours and achieve conservation goals. Have a listen below!
Recently I had a paper out in Conservation Biology (led by Gabby Salazar) that focused on a qualitative method to evaluate the long term contribution impact of a social marketing intervention. Gabby used General Elimination Methodology, a theory driven qualitative evaluation method, to assess the long-term impacts of a social marketing campaign on human behavior … [Read more…]
Fresh of press is a new article in the journal Animal Conservation (FULL TEXT HERE). In it we describe an intervention to reduce demand for bushmeat in northern Tanzania. The intervention was centered around the 1-h radio show My Wildlife – My Community which included 15-min episodes of the radio drama Temboni, designed by PCI … [Read more…]
Measuring change is hard. But it is also critical to programs hoping to influence human behaviour towards more positive societal outcomes. In a newly published paper, Does It Work for Biodiversity? Experiences and Challenges in the Evaluation of Social Marketing Campaigns, we tackle the challenge of evaluating social marketing campaigns targeting fishing communities in the … [Read more…]
For years there have been reports in the popular press of the impact of the Harry Potter phenomenon in the UK on the demand for owls as pets. This narrative became so popular that it led even JK Rowling to issue several statements on this issue asking fans to not keep owls as pets. But … [Read more…]