Search

Understanding how private landholders make deforestation decisions is of paramount importance for conservation. Behavioural frameworks from the social sciences have a lot to offer researchers and practitioners, yet these insights remain underutilised in describing what drives landholders' deforestation intentions under important political, social, and management contexts. Using survey data of private landholders in Queensland, Australia, we compare the ability of two popular behavioural models to predict future deforestation intentions, and propose a more integrated behavioural model of deforestation intentions. We found that the integrated model outperformed other models, revealing the importance of threat perceptions, attitudes, and social norms for predicting landholders' deforestation intentions. Social capital, policy uncertainty, and years of experience are important contextual moderators of these psychological factors. We conclude with recommendations for promoting behaviour change in this deforestation hotspot and highlight how others can adopt similar approaches to illuminate more proximate drivers of environmental behaviours in other contexts.

Nature‐based tourism has a unique opportunity, and arguably responsibility, to promote widespread action on climate change. However, research suggests an aversion to providing information that might appear divisive or 'ruin' peoples day, particularly in places that are vulnerable to degradation.We explore how exposure to climate change information in vulnerable nature settings influences indicators of (i) the visitor experience and (ii) climate change engagement. Using a quasi‐experimental approach, we provided climate information on tourist boats operating on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia and compared visitor experiences with a control condition where climate information was not provided. Visitor surveys (n = 656) assessed perceptions and experiences.Overall, visitors on trips where climate information was provided were more likely to report that the reef experience exceeded their expectations and did not report any reduction in subjective trip satisfaction.However, we detected minimal effects of climate information on indicators of climate engagement (threat awareness, action awareness, or information seeking), suggesting room for improvement in interpretation approach and design. Indeed, visitors reported high levels of acceptability for incorporating more information about climate change, particularly about actions.Synthesis and applications: These results suggest that providing climate information does not undermine visitor experiences and while further research is required to determine the most effective approach for influencing climate change engagement, an appetite for more information exists. It is possible that what tourism operators are fearful of, may be an opportunity to improve outcomes aligned with both industry and environmental objectives. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities have a strong role in protecting biodiversity. In addition to participation in restoration, a range of actions in the public or private sphere may support biodiversity. Despite this, there is a lack of clarity about what actions should be prioritized for behavior change campaigns. We developed and applied a method to prioritize community actions for biodiversity conservation that incorporates an expert‐based assessment of impact and a community‐informed measure of the likelihood of uptake. In stage 1, experts (n = 143) completed a survey that quantified the relative impact of actions based on best–worst scaling of perceived impact. In stage 2, surveyed community members (n = 3200) ranked the likelihood of adopting actions based on the ease or difficulty of performing each action, and the opportunity for change based on the proportion of respondents not yet engaging in each behavior. Experts gave the following actions the highest ranking for impact: voting for the environment (first), participating in restoration in ecological priority areas (second), and purchasing and protecting remnant bushland (third). When considering the disciplinary background and institutional background of experts, voting and participating in restoration activities remained in the upper ranked options. However, there was some divergence between these groups. For example, reducing beef consumption was ranked third by university‐based experts but ranked 28th by experts based in state government. Overall, community members ranked the following behaviors as most likely to be adopted: following quarantine laws (first), reducing plastic use (second), and managing pets (third). Top likelihood ranking of actions was minimally affected by community characteristics (nature relatedness, gender, location). Integrating these findings, the action ranked most favorably for impact, likelihood, and opportunity was participating in restoration. Choosing actions for behavior change campaigns requires consideration of the entire social–ecological system—from social factors that enable or constrain adoption to the ecological impact of actions across relevant social and ecological contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engagement in biodiversity citizen science initiatives can confer health and wellbeing benefits to individuals and communities. Yet, few biodiversity citizen science initiatives are explicitly planned to optimize health and wellbeing as a potential co-benefit, leading to missed opportunities for biodiversity conservation and human health. In this perspective, we use a dose-response approach to discuss the components that determine how engagement in biodiversity citizen science initiatives map onto opportunities to foster health and wellbeing benefits. We considered aspects related to the duration and frequency of contact with nature, and the intensity of interactions with nature and between individuals to highlight the different health benefits across the variety of citizen science initiatives. To illustrate these aspects, we use a sample of 95 citizen science initiatives from seven English and non-English-speaking countries and show how careful project design can increase the potential to confer health and wellbeing benefits to participants. We conclude with considerations on how to enhance the health and wellbeing benefits from citizen science initiatives, and propose potential research avenues to assess synergies and trade-offs between benefits to biodiversity and human health from these initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy instruments—such as regulation, financial incentives, and agricultural extension—are commonly applied by governments to promote sustainable agricultural practices and tackle ecosystem degradation. Despite substantial investment, little data are available to gauge the impact of evolving policy mixes. We constructed a Bayesian network model to explore relationships between policy instruments, contextual factors, and adoption. Applying a series of scenarios, we present examples of how different instruments influence adoption and how their effectiveness is shaped by contextual factors. Scenarios highlight that the effect of policy instruments is often modest, and constrained by diverse practice and population characteristics. These findings allow us to reflect on the role of policy instruments, and the conditions necessary to support practice change. For example, our findings raise questions about the role of financial benefits versus financial capacity, and highlight the potential importance of concepts such as mental bandwidth in shaping both motivation and capacity to adopt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water management increasingly focuses on tackling stormwater pollution to improve waterway health. Community members have a role in adopting pollution-reduction practices and supporting technologies such as water sensitive urban design. However, because communities are unfamiliar with these practices and technologies, little is known about how they make sense of these 'water sensitive innovations'. Drawing on Diffusion of Innovations theory, we conduct focus groups across different regions of Australia. Our findings indicate that key barriers to adoption included poor understanding of the relative advantage of these practices and technologies, and perceived poor compatibility with community members' lifestyle and local geography. In turn, appraisals of relative advantage were constrained by limited observability of stormwater pollution and the benefits that innovations generate for people and the environment. Our findings suggest engagement strategies should emphasize the relevance and advantages of water sensitive innovations, and help individuals visualize the intangible elements of stormwater pollution management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's biodiversity is facing a crisis due to factors such as habitat destruction, invasive species, disruption of Indigenous practices, and climate change. This has led to high extinction rates and significant implications for the economy, human health, and culture. To address this issue, the Biodiversity Council has been established, consisting of experts from various fields, including Indigenous knowledge. The Council aims to promote biodiversity conservation by enhancing public understanding, shaping public discourse, raising awareness of threats, and holding agencies accountable. They work in a politically neutral manner and collaborate with government officials, ecologists, First Peoples groups, and conservation practitioners to amplify their expertise and encourage action. [Extracted from the article]