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Social Marketing and Behavior Change

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Abstract

Historically, conservationists have focused on financial and technical solutions to human-wildlife conflicts (Redpath et al., 2013). It has become clear that although these are important to generate a context where change is possible, more attention to human behaviour is needed to achieve longer-term human-wildlife coexistence (Veríssimo & Campbell, 2015). Interventions targeting human behaviour have been largely focused on measures such as regulation and education. Regulation in this context refers to the system of rules made by a government or other authority, usually backed by penalties and enforcement mechanisms, which describes the way people should behave, while education is concerned with the provision of information about a topic. However, the degree of influence of these interventions depends on the priority audience being motivated (i.e. the individual believes change is in their best interest) and/or able to change (i.e. overcome social pressure, inertia and social norms) (Figure 21) (Smith et al., 2020b).
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