Conservation and human behaviour: lessons from social psychology

Despite increased effort from non-governmental organisations, academics and governments over recent decades, several threats continue to cause species declines and even extinctions. Resource use by a growing human population is a significant driver of biodiversity loss, so conservation scientists need to be interested in the factors that motivate human behaviour. Economic models have been applied to human decision making for many years; however, humans are notfinancially rational beings and other characteristics of the decisionmaker (including attitude) and the pressure that people perceive to behave in a certain way (subjective norms) may influence decision making; these are characteristics considered by social psychologists interested in humandecisionmaking.We review social-psychology theories of behaviour andhow theyhavebeenused in the context of conservation andnatural-resourcemanagement.Many studies focus ongeneral attitudes towards conservation rather than attitudes towards specific behaviours of relevance to conservation and thus have limited value in designing interventions to change specific behaviours (e.g. reduce hunting of a threatened species). Bymore specifically defining the behaviour of interest, and investigating attitude in the context of other social-psychological predictors of behaviour (e.g. subjective norms, the presence of facilitating factors and moral obligation), behaviours that have an impact on conservation goals will be better understood, allowing for the improved design of interventions to influence them. Additional keywords: attitude, behaviour, decision making, parks, poaching, hunting, social norms, taboo.