Delivering behavioural change at scale: What conservation can learn from other fields

Travers, Henry; Walsh, James S.; Vogt, Sonja; Clements, Tom; Milner‐Gulland, E.J.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109092

Cited by 34 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…Behavioural science interventions for modifying human behaviour, in the following called (behaviour) interventions, have been put forward to mitigate large-scale environmental problems, such as climate change or the ongoing loss of biodiversity (Amel et al, 2017;Reddy et al, 2017;Battista et al, 2018;Klotz et al, 2018;Travers et al, 2021). These interventions typically rely on human decision heuristics or social influence (Byerly et al, 2018;Cinner, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion at scale: opportunities and limitations

Berger

Efferson

Vogt

2021

Behav. Public Policy

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Rapid and comprehensive social change is required to mitigate pressing environmental issues such as climate change. Social tipping interventions have been proposed as a policy tool for creating this kind of change. Social tipping means that a small minority committed to a target behaviour can create a self-reinforcing dynamic, which establishes the target behaviour as a social norm. The possibility of achieving the large-scale diffusion of pro-environmental norms and related behaviours with an intervention delimited in size and time is tempting. Yet, the canonical model of tipping, the coordination game, may evoke overly optimistic expectations regarding the potential of tipping, due to the underlying assumption of homogenous preferences. Relaxing this assumption, we devise a threshold model of tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion. The model suggests that depending on the distribution of social preferences in a population, and the individual cost of adopting a given pro-environmental behaviour, the same intervention can activate tipping, have little effect, or produce a backlash. Favourable to tip pro-environmental norms are widespread advantageous inequity aversion and low adoption costs. Adverse are widespread self-regarding preferences or disadvantageous inequity aversion, and high costs. We discuss the policy implications of these findings and suggest suitable intervention strategies for different contexts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion at scale: opportunities and limitations

Berger

Efferson

Vogt

2021

Behav. Public Policy

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“…However, despite broad calls for better uptake of the available evidence in conservation decision making, this is often challenging to achieve in practice (Sutherland & Wordley, 2017). This challenge arises, at least partly, because conservation practitioners and policymakers, including those who intend to adopt evidence, may not have the mental roadmaps required to enact their goals (Travers et al., 2021; World Bank, 2015). Here we highlight how our hierarchical assessments across scale can be applied to facilitate benefits for multiple end‐users, by linking the derived biodiversity measures to trends, benchmarks or targets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By linking biodiversity measures to trends, benchmarks or targets, it highlighted how these hierarchical assessments can be applied to facilitate continuous biodiversity improvements and multiple end‐user benefits. In effect, it has set out a range of mental models to help decisionmakers better envisage how these citizen science results meet their specific biodiversity reporting and management needs (Travers et al., 2021; World Bank, 2015). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the state of New Zealand's garden birds from national to local scales

MacLeod

Green

Howard

et al. 2022

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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Better biodiversity indicators are needed to address information gaps, describe trends accurately and robustly and be useful for decisionmakers. Citizen science's potential to help address these challenges often goes unrealized, despite promises by organizers to deliver such information. This paper addresses these challenges by demonstrating the powerful utility of citizen science results for improving our knowledge of the state of New Zealand's garden birds, from the national to the local scale. For 14 species and three annual assessments, we: (a) calculate changes in bird counts over the medium to short term (over 10 and 5 years, respectively); (b) use an alert system to identify trends of interest or concern and collate the assessments in an online interactive tool; and (c) apply the results to address management questions. Seven species have declined nationally in gardens in the medium term, but the population trends of six of these have improved in the short term (the declines of three have been reversed). For Otago, as a regional example, a wider range of medium‐term alerts was initially raised, and positive short‐term changes were also more evident. Performance differed across Otago's districts: positive increases were muted in Dunedin City, while Waitaki had the highest number of increasing species and Central Otago more species rapidly increasing. For 54 neighbourhoods managed by Predator Free Dunedin, as a local example, the baseline medium‐term assessment detected rapid declines in two species, moderate to shallow declines in five species and increases in three species. Based on these findings, managers could improve benefits for biodiversity by using: (a) trends, to direct and evaluate policy investments; (b) benchmarks, to provide social incentives; and (c) targets, to give management purpose and direction. Our case study highlights how citizen science can address biodiversity information gaps and make powerful management contributions at scale by delivering metrics that are robust and comparable across time and space, showing decisionmakers how to readily access and interpret information of interest, building trust and value and highlighting how spatially hierarchical assessments can facilitate multiple end‐user benefits.

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“…Transparency with regard to the scale of the challenge and potential risks for diverse communities is essential to achieving ethical and sustainable paths towards biodiversity impact mitigation 13,48 . Here, we show that achieving ambitious No Net Loss or Net Gain targets may not currently be feasible from the perspective of one organisation wishing to tackle the embodied impacts of their food.…”

Section: Recovering Biodiversity One Organisation At a Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Meeting nature-positive goals for an organisation’s food system

Taylor

Bull

Ashton

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Organisations are increasingly committing to ‘nature-positive’ targets, in line with proposed international goals. However, there are few worked examples showing how to feasibly achieve these targets. Here, we set out a novel approach to achieving nature-positive targets with respect to the embodied biodiversity impacts of an organisation’s food consumption. We quantify these impacts using a comprehensive database of life-cycle environmental impacts from food and provide exploratory strategies to meet defined targets, structured according to the Mitigation and Conservation Hierarchy. Through considering the varying needs and values across the organisation’s internal community, we identify a range of feasible, targeted approaches towards mitigating impacts, which balance top-down and bottom-up actions to different degrees. However, we also find that delivering ambitious nature-positive targets within current constraints will be highly challenging, particularly when considering how to mitigate cumulative impacts. Our results evidence the need for transformative systemic change if nature-positive targets are to be achievable at the organisational scale.

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Delivering behavioural change at scale: What conservation can learn from other fields

Cited by 34 publications

References 99 publications

Tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion at scale: opportunities and limitations

Tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion at scale: opportunities and limitations

Assessing the state of New Zealand's garden birds from national to local scales

Meeting nature-positive goals for an organisation’s food system

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