Assessing the integration of social marketing principles in ivory demand management interventions in China and Southeast Asia

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how well ivory demand reduction efforts in China and Southeast Asia use social marketing strategies to change consumer behavior.

Contribution

The study provides a systematic assessment of the application of social marketing principles in ivory demand interventions over time.

Findings

From 2018 to 2022, interventions showed higher quality and more use of social marketing principles compared to 2008–2017.

Despite improvements, most interventions still underused the full range of social marketing approaches and relied on superficial theories.

The study highlights the need for better integration of behavioral theories and systematic evaluation in future interventions.

Abstract

Consumer demand for ivory perpetuates the unsustainable and illegal killing of African elephants and other wildlife species. Interventions that aim to change consumer behavior are increasingly recognized as a crucial element of demand management. However, poor design and implementation have limited their effectiveness. We evaluated how ivory demand‐management interventions in China and neighboring Southeast Asian countries align with best practices from the behavioral field of social marketing. Through a literature review, we identified 55 interventions conducted from 2008 to 2022. We used 2 social marketing frameworks to assess each intervention's capacity to influence behavior. We conducted semistructured interviews with 5 intervention practitioners to provide contextual grounding for our review findings. From 2018 to 2022, social marketing principles were more frequently applied and interventions were of a higher quality (n = 26) than interventions conducted from 2008 to 2017, reflecting a growing adoption of consumer‐insight‐driven strategies. Since 2018, 7 interventions applied no social marketing principles, and 9 interventions, to varying degrees, included monitoring and evaluation. Although 13 interventions contained some theoretical considerations, these were often vague and superficial. Despite identifying a shift from experiential practices to evidence‐based approaches over time, the shift was largely restricted to communications‐based social and behavior change approaches. This left the wide range of social marketing approaches underused. Ivory demand management must improve the breadth and depth of social marketing used to contribute to long‐term elephant conservation. We suggest all consumer approaches tackling demand for wildlife meaningfully consider integrating behavioral theories in intervention design, undertake primary or secondary research to enable evidence‐led decision‐making, conduct systematic monitoring for evidence‐based learning and adaptation, and use impact and process evaluation methods to understand the mechanisms and magnitude of behavioral change following interventions.

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