Behavior Change for Nature: A Behavioral Science Toolkit for Practitioners

"Our growing understanding of human behavior and decision-making holds tremendous promise for inspiring the behavior change necessary to conserve nature and provide for the communities who depend on it."

Biodiversity loss and the degradation of natural systems are increasingly threatening the livelihoods, health, and well-being of people, species, and places. The organisations Rare and the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) contend that conservation is a behavioural challenge that requires behaviourally informed solutions. They have created this toolkit to explore how people's cognitive biases, emotions, social networks, and decision-making environments impact behaviours and choices.

BIT and Rare each has its own methodology, but both: recognise the need to be specific and clear in the way they set behavioural objectives; seek to thoroughly understand the drivers and barriers of behaviours in the real-world context; aim to elevate the experiences and insight of the intended audience(s); and seek to be rigorous in the way that solutions draw on good behavioural science and measure the impact of an intervention.

The toolkit provides concrete tools for conservation and sustainability practitioners, as well as the methodologies for putting them into practice. Contents include:

• Chapter 1 examines 5 main categories of conservation threats (elaborated upon further in Annex A): habitat loss and degradation, overexploitation, illegal wildlife consumption, human-wildlife conflict, and pollution. For each, the toolkit identifies intended audiences and target behaviours that could help to mitigate the losses to natural systems.
• Chapter 2 discusses the merits and shortcomings of the 3 conventional approaches on which conservation efforts have traditionally relied to bring about change: legislation and regulation; market forces and material incentives; and awareness and education. It highlights 3 insights from behavioural science that provide a new perspective: the need to focus on non-conscious as well as conscious drivers of behavior; the need to focus on the setting of our behaviours as well as internal motives and drivers; and the need to focus on behaviours rather than solely beliefs, attitudes, or intentions.
• Chapter 3 collates key findings from behavioural science and proposes 15 key strategies, grouped into 3 categories: motivate the change (#1-5); socialise the change (#6-10); and ease the change (#11-15):
  1. Leverage positive emotions.
  2. Frame messaging to personal values, identities, or interests.
  3. Personalise and humanise messages.
  4. Harness cognitive biases.
  5. Design behaviourally-informed incentives.
  6. Promote the desirable norm.
  7. Harness reciprocity.
  8. Increase behavioural observability and accountability.
  9. Encourage public and peer-to-peer commitments.
  10. Choose the right messenger.
  11. Make it easy by removing frictions and promoting substitutes.
  12. Provide support with planning and implementation of intentions.
  13. Simplify messages and decisions.
  14. Alter the choice setting.
  15. Use timely moments, prompts, and reminders.
• Chapter 4 shows how BIT and Rare might apply these ideas in the real world through hypothetical and real case studies of tackling the illegal wildlife trade and overfishing.
• Annex B provides more detail on BIT's evaluation approach.