The utility of a psychological approach to human behaviour in applied conservation practice

With increasing awareness of the scope for social science techniques to be tools for delivering conservation impact, it is timely that conservation psychology be developed as an applied discipline. In seeking to understand why people behave in the ways that they do, tools and techniques from applied psychology can be used to encourage pro-conservation behaviour, and emphasising these practical outputs is key to the urgently needed wider uptake of this currently fringe discipline. At present, few studies within the field of conservation research adopt social psychology frameworks and apply them to in situ conservation problems. This is a damaging omission: as a discipline which revolves around the many undesirable outcomes of human behaviour, conservation would do well to capitalise upon these approaches. Currently, good, clear examples of the application of social psychology frameworks to conservation problems, to serve as guides or blueprints for developing the subject, are rare. The aim of this thesis is to use select concepts which have been shown to effectively articulate the reasons behind human behaviour, and apply them to conservation problems in eastern and southern Africa. Focussing on livestock management, predation, and land management issues, I use a social psychology framework to explore the reasons underlying certain conservation-relevant behaviours, and identify how these behaviours might be influenced to achieve conservation ends. I show that a simple theory of planned behaviour framework can explain variation in livestock management behaviour across a socially and ecologically diverse landscape in southern Kenya. I also show that attitudes and social norms, independently, have significant impacts on peoples’ behaviour. Furthering this line of enquiry, I demonstrate that the structure of social norms regarding predators and livestock predation are consistent between Kenya and Zimbabwe. Intervention tools using social norms may therefore be applied in a variety of contexts with minimal adaptation, and are consequently suitable for non-expert use. In a final social-norm focussed study in Kenya, I use a quasi- experimental approach to illustrate how norms can be influenced using relatively simple priming techniques, and that these manipulations impact behavioural intention. Together these results demonstrate that social norms are 1) impactful on behaviour, 2) highly conserved, and therefore common approaches can be used across a wide area, and 3) flexible, and can be influenced with relatively basic interventions. I conclude that social norms may provide an easy target for behavioural conservation interventions, and practitioners should consider whether social norms can be used to guide the behaviour of human populations in a range of conservation conflicts. I also examine the sub-structure of attitudes, and conclude that straightforward approaches can be used to break down the ‘attitudes’ concept into meaningful sub-units; when designing interventions, practitioners may wish to target these sub-components to increase intervention efficacy. Together, this thesis demonstrates that conservation psychology can be a highly applied discipline, and it is only through lack of use by conservation scientists that its many offerings have, until now, been little known in applied conservation practice (although fully recognised in other disciplines such as education and human healthcare). Although this thesis is a brief glimpse into the various useful approaches to behaviour change which may emerge from correct application of social psychology techniques, I hope that my results will encourage future researchers and practitioners that this is an exciting, emerging field which will richly reward far greater emphasis in the sphere of wildlife conservation.