Dean Angela J, Fielding Kelly S, Smith Liam D G, Church Emma K, Wilson Kerrie A
Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
School of the Environment, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
Conserv Biol. 2025 Apr;39(2):e14372. doi: 10.1111/cobi.14372. Epub 2024 Sep 13.
Communities have a strong role in protecting biodiversity. In addition to participation in restoration, a range of actions in the public or private sphere may support biodiversity. Despite this, there is a lack of clarity about what actions should be prioritized for behavior change campaigns. We developed and applied a method to prioritize community actions for biodiversity conservation that incorporates an expert-based assessment of impact and a community-informed measure of the likelihood of uptake. In stage 1, experts (n = 143) completed a survey that quantified the relative impact of actions based on best-worst scaling of perceived impact. In stage 2, surveyed community members (n = 3200) ranked the likelihood of adopting actions based on the ease or difficulty of performing each action, and the opportunity for change based on the proportion of respondents not yet engaging in each behavior. Experts gave the following actions the highest ranking for impact: voting for the environment (first), participating in restoration in ecological priority areas (second), and purchasing and protecting remnant bushland (third). When considering the disciplinary background and institutional background of experts, voting and participating in restoration activities remained in the upper ranked options. However, there was some divergence between these groups. For example, reducing beef consumption was ranked third by university-based experts but ranked 28th by experts based in state government. Overall, community members ranked the following behaviors as most likely to be adopted: following quarantine laws (first), reducing plastic use (second), and managing pets (third). Top likelihood ranking of actions was minimally affected by community characteristics (nature relatedness, gender, location). Integrating these findings, the action ranked most favorably for impact, likelihood, and opportunity was participating in restoration. Choosing actions for behavior change campaigns requires consideration of the entire social-ecological system-from social factors that enable or constrain adoption to the ecological impact of actions across relevant social and ecological contexts.
社区在保护生物多样性方面发挥着重要作用。除了参与生态恢复外，公共或私人领域的一系列行动也可能支持生物多样性。尽管如此，对于行为改变运动应优先采取哪些行动，仍缺乏明确认识。我们开发并应用了一种方法，对社区保护生物多样性的行动进行优先级排序，该方法纳入了基于专家的影响评估和基于社区的行动采纳可能性衡量。在第一阶段，专家（n = 143）完成了一项调查，该调查基于对感知影响的最佳-最差尺度量化了行动的相对影响。在第二阶段，接受调查的社区成员（n = 3200）根据执行每项行动的难易程度以及基于尚未参与每种行为的受访者比例的改变机会，对采取行动的可能性进行了排名。专家们对以下行动的影响给予了最高排名：为环境投票（第一）、参与生态优先区域的恢复（第二）以及购买和保护残余灌木丛（第三）。在考虑专家的学科背景和机构背景时，投票和参与恢复活动仍处于排名靠前的选项。然而，这些群体之间存在一些差异。例如，减少牛肉消费在大学专家中排名第三，但在州政府专家中排名第28。总体而言，社区成员将以下行为列为最有可能被采纳的行为：遵守检疫法（第一）、减少塑料使用（第二）以及管理宠物（第三）。行动的最高可能性排名受社区特征（与自然的关联度、性别、地点）的影响最小。综合这些结果，在影响、可能性和机会方面排名最有利的行动是参与恢复。为行为改变运动选择行动需要考虑整个社会生态系统——从促进或限制采纳的社会因素到跨相关社会和生态背景的行动的生态影响。
