Research group Biodiversity & Health
People, biodiversity and behaviour change
| Contacts | Partners | Publications |
Short description
Conservation goals of the Convention of Biological Diversity, enshrined in international and national policies, have been repeatedly missed. The conclusions of the 2019 global assessment on biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services are stark: biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services are deteriorating worldwide, and goals for conserving and sustainably using nature cannot be met under current trajectories. Human activities are the main driver of biodiversity crisis (Cardinale et al. 2012) and solutions lie in changing people’s attitudes and behaviours towards the natural world (Amel et al. 2017; Byerly & Fisher 2017; Byerly et al. 2018; Kidd et al. 2019; Selinske et al. 2018). In psychology, behaviour change interventions are a coordinated set of activities designed to change specific choices and practices (Michie & West, 2013; Michie et al 2011). Translating conservation actions into behaviour change interventions requires drawing on conservation and environmental psychology.
This project aids biological conservation goals by investigating how people perceive and act on the environment in order to encourage pro-environmental behaviour change. We do this by interrogating existing national biological conservation policies in order to identify gaps in behaviour change interventions. We also analyse the behaviour change outcomes from participation in conservation-based citizen science projects.
Contacts
Partners
Publications
Marselle, Turbe, A., Shwartz, A., Bonn, A., & Colléony, A. (in development) How to change behaviour to foster conservation? A critical analysis of EU pollinator policies.