From the forest to the fork: Why we need to “reframe conservation” for conservation behavior change campaigns

Abstract

The conservation sector is increasingly recognizing that conservation is not only about animals and plants but equally about people and their behavior (Verissimo, 2013; Schultz, 2011), and there is growing interest and practice in applying human social science theory and approaches to behavior change (see e.g., McKenzie-Mohr et al., 2011; Reddy et al., 2017; Stern, 2000). Framing theory suggests that how something is presented to an audience influences how they process the information. Framing an issue is among the first steps to introduce the topic to intended audiences. The frame is an initial filter to structure and give meaning to the exchange of ideas, using “organizing principles that are socially shared and persistent” (Reese et al., 2001). As the conservation sector deals with more complex issues such as reducing urban demand for bushmeat and applies new approaches such as using mass communications and social marketing strategies to bring about behavior change, “conservation” needs to be “reframed” so the topic fits the worldviews and interests of target audiences. Often the perceptions held by consumers of bushmeat and those held by those in the conservation sector are incongruent. From a conservation perspective, eating bushmeat in cities is a threat to wildlife. Too much meat is hunted to meet urban demand and is hunting many species to extinction. It is also contributing to food insecurity for rural and forest people who no longer have enough protein to eat (Wilkie et al., 2016). Urbanites in Central Africa have many motivations for eating bushmeat. For them, bushmeat consumption does not present a problem. The problem is the constraints on eating bushmeat that they encounter. Since 2015, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been developing a model for using conservation social marketing to reduce urban