Motivations for the use and consumption of wildlife products

Abstract

The dominant approach to combating the illegal wildlife trade has traditionally been to restrict the supply of wildlife products. Yet conservationists increasingly recognise the importance of implementing demand-side interventions that target the end consumers in the trade chain. Their aim is to curb the consumption of wildlife or shift consumption to more sustainable alternatives. However, there are still considerable knowledge gaps in our understanding of the diversity of consumer motivations in the context of illegal wildlife trade, which includes hundreds of thousands of species, different uses, and diverse contexts. We developed a typology of common motivations held by wildlife consumers that can be used to inform conservation interventions, based upon consultation with multiple experts from a diversity of backgrounds, nationalities, and focal taxa. We identified five main motivational categories for wildlife use: experiential, social, functional, financial, and spiritual, each containing sub-categories. This framework is intended to facilitate more nuanced approaches to demand reduction, such as the tailoring of interventions—whether behaviour change campaigns, enforcement efforts, or incentive programmes—to the specific context in which they will be used. It is an important step towards producing a more systematic approach to designing demand reduction interventions that are more likely to succeed.

Wild assumptions? Questioning simplistic narratives about consumer preferences for wildlife products

“…The specific motivation for consuming a wildlife product will tend to affect preferences (Thomas‐Walters et al., 2019). Consumers buying ingestible wildlife products for food or medicine may select wild‐harvested products for perceived naturalness, persuaded by notions of organic health or vitality, whereas others might prefer farmed products that comply with certain health and safety standards (e.g.…”

Understanding Traditional Chinese Medicine to strengthen conservation outcomes

“…The consumptive use of wildlife is often rooted in traditional beliefs and customs (Thomas‐Walters et al., 2020). Many people around the world rely on traditional forms of medicine for their health and wellbeing.…”

Ethno-medicinal uses of vertebrates in the Chitwan-Annapurna Landscape, central Nepal

“…In addition to this, investigating the use of animals in traditional medicine could highlight an important aspect of indigenous knowledge [ 27 , 33 ]. Recent studies have shown that there is a loss of many animal species [ 34 , 35 ] as they are used in different traditional systems such as Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopathy, Chinese and Tibetan traditional medicines [ 9 , 19 , 36 , 37 ]. Animals origin medicine cover about 15–20% of the Ayurvedic medicines [ 27 ].…”