Understanding and changing wildlife consumption behavior from a multidisciplinary perspective

Abstract

Escalating global demand for wildlife products and consequential illegal wildlife trade has become one of the major threats to biodiversity conservation. In the recent COVID-19 pandemic, growing public health risks of wildlife trade and consumption have triggered widespread public concern. In this review, we adopt a multidisciplinary perspective, including sociology, psychology, behavioral science and other disciplines, to understand the motivations for wildlife consumption in China, and to propose scientifically guided behavioral change countermeasures. The current state of wildlife consumption in China reveals certain functional, social, experiential and other non-essential needs of wildlife as major drivers of consumption, which are affected by a host of complex factors. Based on our understanding of the drivers of demand, we suggest using behavioral change frameworks, and a variety of behavioral change methods, including education, social influence, regulation and nudging, to effectively influence and change wildlife consumption behavior. For effective implementation of behavioral change strategies, collaboration needs to be strengthened, both among and across diverse disciplines, actors and scales of interest.