Interventions targeting consumer behavior may help to reduce demand for bushmeat in urban areas. Understanding the drivers of urban bushmeat consumption is crucial to guide such interventions; however the cultural and socio-psychological factors driving consumer behavior remain understudied. Through qualitative interviews with urban bushmeat consumers in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, we investigated perceptions of bushmeat and other animal proteins, and social norms regulating urban demand for bushmeat. The perception of bushmeat as natural, tasty and healthy, and a rare luxury product functioning as a symbol of social status, underpins social norms to provide bushmeat. The main barriers to purchasing were cost and availability. Locally produced fish, meat, and poultry were positively perceived as organic and healthy, whereas frozen imported animal proteins were perceived negatively as transformed, of poor quality and taste, and unhealthy. Our findings provide an initial baseline understanding of social-psychological drivers shaping consumption that can inform the design of bushmeat demand reduction campaigns.

The unprecedented global scale of illegal wildlife trade poses threats to humans and ecosystems. Policies calling for increased enforcement to control illicit trade are rooted in the idea that more enforcement will result in greater deterrence, but as yet it is unclear how the illegal wildlife supply chain responds to enforcement actions. To evaluate the impact of formal or informal deterrence, it may be pertinent to consider strategies used by illicit networks to avoid sanction threats. Using an exploratory case study on urban wild meat trade (Republic of Congo), we describe some of the strategies used to avoid detection and consider how the concept of restrictive deterrence can be used to advance our understanding of the broader impacts of sanction threats on offender decision-making in illegal wildlife supply chains.