Drivers of adoption and spread of wildlife management initiatives in Mexico

Conservation initiatives rarely achieve the scale required to respond ongoing biodiversity loss. Understanding what drives adoption of conservation provides key insights into how expand a necessary for effective outcomes. In this article, we identified characteristics initiatives, adopters, and context that influenced extensive Wildlife Management Units (UMAs) in Mexico. We interviewed 22 experts gather their perceptions about factors driving spread UMAs, interactions. used Diffusion Innovation Theory qualitative data analysis develop theory change based on experts' illustrates led landholders adopt UMAs. found that: (a) UMAs depended landholders' ability learn about, register, implement them; (b) alignment with objectives private tenure facilitated adoption, reflecting likelihood ease participation, respectively; (c) observability benefits availability technical advice were influencing speed by facilitating learning. Our empirically derived describing revealed focused clear hypotheses can be further tested quantitatively.