Authors
Diogo Veríssimo, Carina Schmid, Fidelcastor Kimario, Heather Eves
Publication date
2018
Conference
ECCB2018: 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology. 12th-15th of June 2018, Jyväskylä, Finland
Publisher
Open Science Centre, University of Jyväskylä
Description
Conservationists are increasingly aware of the importance of behavior change interventions to tackle threats to biodiversity. One of the most common strategies for the dissemination of demand reduction messages is the use of mass media (e.g., radio or television). The mass media are highly appealing as they can reach thousands or even millions of people simultaneously. However, there are important barriers to the effective evaluation of these behavior change interventions. One of them is self-selection bias, which stems from the fact that people actively choose to be either part of the control or treatment groups. This bias means that comparing listeners to non-listeners, as is commonly done, is likely to yield biased estimates of impact, as those that actively choose to listen to programs containing wildlife related messages are more likely to have an interest in wildlife and its conservation. We investigate this issue through the case study of an intervention to reduce demand for bushmeat in five communities, in northern Tanzania. The intervention was centered around 25 episodes of a radio drama, part of a one-hour radio show. Each episode of the serial radio drama was accompanied by a 45-minute interactive call-in show, which featured interviews with experts, local information about community resources, and provided the audience with a platform to reflect on the drama, share opinions and ask questions. We evaluated this intervention using a Before-After-Control-Impact framework based on longitudinal data from 168 respondents. To account for potential selection bias we used a matching algorithm together with ordinal regression to build a …
Scholar articles
D Veríssimo, C Schmid, F Kimario, H Eves - ECCB2018: 5th European Congress of Conservation …, 2018