Everyone is normal: consistent livestock management norms and demographic clusters in Kenya and Zimbabwe

Journal article

Human behaviour often determines the success of conservation projects, and the emerging discipline of conservation psychology focuses on understanding and influencing this behaviour. Social norms (a group’s perception of the appropriateness of behaviours) are a key influence on human behaviour, and social norms campaigns can often engender population-wide behaviour changes. Human-predator conflict is a major conservation issue, and one in which human behaviour plays a substantial role: high standards of livestock management can considerably lower predation levels. In this paper, we use factor analysis to show that the livestock management normative belief structure of rural livestock owners is highly conserved between populations in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Through cluster analysis, we also show that qualitatively distinct attitudinal groups can be identified, and that some of these groups are common to both regions. Researchers often assume that social landscapes are unique, but we show that this is not the case for livestock management norms. People’s attitudes are also generally assumed to be site-specific, but we found commonalities across different regions, indicating that certain attitude sectors may be present in all livestock owning populations. If livestock management norms and attitude groups are indeed highly conserved between regions, it may be possible to develop standardised tools with which to understand the norms that influence livestock management behaviour, and identify population sectors for targeted interventions. Often, conservation projects have little in-house social science expertise, and social studies are avoided despite the benefits they bring. Here, we demonstrate that standardised approaches may be possible, and could aid the implementation – and success – of conservation interventions.

Authors: Perry, LR; Moorhouse, TP; Sibanda, L; Sompeta, SL; Macdonald, DW

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Conservation Science and Practice
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 12
• Article number: e313
• Publication date: 2020-11-11
• Acceptance date: 2020-10-17
• DOI: 10.1111/csp2.313
• EISSN: 2578-4854
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR