Social influence and forest habitat conservation: Experimental evidence from Vermont's maple producers

Abstract

Working landscapes can provide biodiversity and ecosystem services. Many voluntary conservation programs ask those who manage working lands-farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners-to steward their resources in ways that maintain or increase these benefits. While research on landowners suggests the importance of social influence in management decisions, few studies have tested whether providing information about the behavior and opinions of others affects decisions related to private land and forest management, stewardship, or conservation. Using a randomized controlled trial design, we mailed three versions of a solicitation letter for a bird habitat conservation program to 967 individuals who manage forests to produce maple syrup. Maple producers who were messaged about recognition for participation were as likely to ask for more information about the program as those who received only a control message that described the program. Providing information about the participation of others had a negative effect on the number of producers requesting information compared to the control. These results highlight the importance of context in using social influence to change land manager behavior. Findings are relevant to conservation researchers and practitioners, offering applications of behavioral science to improve biodiversity and ecosystem service outcomes on private lands. K E Y W O R D Sbehavioral science, biodiversity conservation, field experiment, forest management, nudge, private lands, social influence, working landscapes

Efficacy‐based and normative interventions for facilitating the diffusion of conservation behavior through social networks

“…Our findings regarding the overall ineffectiveness of the norms-only message are contrary to findings from recent studies that show sharing information about the large number of others engaging (or starting to engage) in a behavior can enhance conservation action (Geiger & Swim, 2016;Kusmanoff et al, 2020;Sparkman & Walton, 2017). However, several randomized control trials applying normative messaging to biodiversity conservation show null or even negative impacts of social norm interventions (Byerly et al, 2019;Niemiec et al, 2020b). Byerly et al (2019), for example, found that providing information to maple producers about the participation of others in a bird habitat conservation program had a negative effect on the number of producers requesting information about the program compared to an informationonly control.…”

“…Our findings regarding the overall ineffectiveness of the norms‐only message are contrary to findings from recent studies that show sharing information about the large number of others engaging (or starting to engage) in a behavior can enhance conservation action (Geiger & Swim, 2016 ; Kusmanoff et al., 2020 ; Sparkman & Walton, 2017 ). However, several randomized control trials applying normative messaging to biodiversity conservation show null or even negative impacts of social norm interventions (Byerly et al., 2019 ; Niemiec et al., 2020b ). Byerly et al.…”

“…However, several randomized control trials applying normative messaging to biodiversity conservation show null or even negative impacts of social norm interventions (Byerly et al, 2019;Niemiec et al, 2020b). Byerly et al (2019), for example, found that providing information to maple producers about the participation of others in a bird habitat conservation program had a negative effect on the number of producers requesting information about the program compared to an informationonly control. Their explanations for the negative impact of normative messaging include the potential for psychological reactance (producers felt their sense of autonomy was threatened by the social norms message) leading to a defensive response.…”

Biodiversity conservation as a promising frontier for behavioural science

“…Naturally, as with all interdisciplinary collaborations, these collaborations will have their challenges 75 . However, recent examples show that effective collaborations can produce novel and mutually beneficial research that suggests practical routes to achieving behaviour change for biodiversity conservation 50,64,[76][77][78] .…”

Exploring private land conservation non-adopters’ attendance at outreach events in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, USA

“…Here, we define non-adopters as those individuals who have not adopted any of a set of conservation practices for which they are eligible (see below). Many messaging studies test interventions drawn from behavioral economics and nudge theory (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008;Byerly et al, 2018), such as positive versus negative framing (Jacobson et al, 2019), information about social norms (Byerly et al, 2019), and appeals to empathy (Czap NV, Banerjee & Burbach, 2019), among others. However, among those studies that measure behavioral outcomes, the dependent variable is often whether respondents request further information (e.g., Dean, Fielding & Wilson, 2019;Reddy et al, 2020), which is a sufficiently different behavior from attending an outreach event to warrant caution in extrapolating findings.…”