3 Mapping Behaviour Changes Required To Meet Scotland's Biodiversity Objectives - The Environment Strategy For Scotland: Behaviour Changes Needed To Achieve Scotland's Goals For Biodiversity

3 Mapping behaviour changes required to meet Scotland’s biodiversity objectives

This chapter presents the findings of the literature review, with a focus on evidence gathered from Phase 1 of the literature review on identifying and categorising key behaviours relevant to improving biodiversity in Scotland and beyond. It also highlights key concepts in the literature on behavioural approaches to biodiversity improvement and conservation, to provide context for the development of policy and public engagement adopting a behavioural lens.

3.1 Behavioural approaches in biodiversity and conservation

3.1.1 Why behavioural approaches are needed

Global decline in biodiversity has accelerated sharply in the past 50 years, with human activities at the heart of the major direct drivers of biodiversity loss, including changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and spread of invasive non-native species (IPBES, 2019). Furthermore, sociocultural factors, changing demography, economy, politics and institutions, and technology, all drive biodiversity change indirectly, and it is increasingly acknowledged that measures to address these indirect drivers will be required to reverse biodiversity decline (IPBES, 2019; Pakeman et al., 2023). Realising this ambition will require transformative change in human behaviour, at multiple scales and involving a wide range of actors (Nielsen, Marteau, et al., 2021). Identifying leverage points for transformational change can benefit from both macro-level analyses focusing on institutions, power and governance, and micro- and meso-level analyses focusing on opportunities for behaviour change at the individual and group levels (Marselle & Golding, 2023; Nielsen, Marteau, et al., 2021).

There is growing recognition of the value of behavioural approaches in the conservation and biodiversity literature, as evidenced by an increase in empirical studies and reviews on the topic within recent years (Balmford et al., 2021; Nielsen, Marteau, et al., 2021; Veríssimo et al., 2024). At the same time, however, many authors point out that in general behavioural science has not been applied widely in conservation and biodiversity research, and where behavioural lenses have been applied in the conservation domain they are often not well linked to behavioural theory (Balmford et al., 2021; Rode et al., 2022). Conversely, whilst there is now a large body of research concerning pro-environmental behaviour change, behaviours addressing biodiversity improvement have been largely overlooked in the context of a focus on household-level behaviours around energy demand reduction, travel mode choice and recycling (Nielsen, Marteau, et al., 2021). Looking at leading journals in the fields of biodiversity conservation and pro-environmental behaviours, Selinske et al. (2018) found that less than 0.3% of papers in the top biodiversity journals related to psychology or behaviour change, and similarly less than 0.4% of papers in key pro-environmental behaviour journals addressed conservation or biodiversity. There are a range of possible reasons proposed for this lack of overlap between fields. One is that biodiversity challenges are often highly context-specific, and biodiversity outcomes arise of out complex interactions within social-ecological systems, meaning it can be difficult to pinpoint particular behaviours to target (Selinske et al., 2018). It is also argued that behavioural research in conservation is underfunded, and that at a more philosophical level, the links between household-level behaviours and biodiversity are often overlooked because of a disconnect between people (particularly urban dwellers) and natural environments (Selinske et al., 2018; Veríssimo et al., 2024).

3.1.2 Framing and defining pro-biodiversity behaviours

While many argue the value of increasing attention to behaviour within biodiversity and conservation science, our review found little in the way of explicit definitions or conceptual development around what constitutes a behaviour relevant to biodiversity specifically. A common thread in the literature focuses on the identification of target behaviours to inform practice within specific conservation initiatives. Within this framing, the focus is on the process of identifying and enabling behaviour changes that will help to address particular threats to identified species or habitats. In this sense of applying a behavioural approach to a specific conservation problem, the expectation is that the specific target behaviours will be highly contextualised. In literature framing biodiversity-related behaviour change in this way, particular behaviours are mentioned as examples illustrating a process of applying a behavioural approach to address a particular ‘threat chain’ (e.g. Balmford et al., 2021; Nielsen et al., 2021).

For the purposes of this review we are, however, concerned more with identifying the wide range of potential behaviours that are relevant to a cultural shift in favour of biodiversity protection and improvement at the societal level. This represents an alternative framing of behaviours impacting on biodiversity as a class of pro-environmental behaviours relevant to the general population. This higher-level (more top-down) framing of biodiversity-related behaviours can potentially offer a valuable complement to more bottom-up, threat chain based, behavioural approaches. It arguably raises questions about how we can measure uptake of relevant behaviours at the individual and societal levels, identify which behaviours might contribute to multiple objectives (within the domain of conservation and beyond), and consider potential trade-offs, as well as identifying positive actions to improve biodiversity as opposed to a focus on mitigating specific threats. To illustrate these different approaches identified in the literature, those adopting the higher level framing have considered a wide range of behaviours together despite these behaviours potentially impacting on different species/habitats and at a range of scales (e.g. conservation volunteering and choosing Marine Stewardship Council seafood products), whereas literature focusing on particular threat chains target behaviours contributing to a specific threat e.g. decline of a population of protected shorebirds in a particular area due to ingesting beach litter (Balmford et al., 2019). Literature adopting a more top-down, higher-level framing talks variously of ‘pro-biodiversity behaviours’ (Aota & Soga, 2024; Soga & Gaston, 2023); ‘biodiversity behaviours’ (Selinske et al., 2020), or ‘(pro-) nature conservation behaviours’ (Barbett et al., 2020; Borg et al., 2024). Here we adopt the term pro-biodiversity behaviours, defined loosely as ‘actions that benefit biodiversity’ (Soga & Gaston, 2023, p. 1). While the broad range of pro-biodiversity behaviours relevant to the general public can arguably include any behaviour that directly or indirectly impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem health more generally, in the present review we exclude behaviours that impact biodiversity primary through their implications for climate change mitigation, sometimes discussed as ‘low carbon behaviours’ or ‘climate change behaviours (Wei et al., 2024; Whitmarsh, 2009). We also exclude behaviours that impact primarily through material consumption and resource efficiency at the general level. Such behaviour changes contributing towards reducing consumption and moving towards a more circular economy or ‘circular behaviours’ (Colley, Hague et al., 2024), are highly relevant to the environmental footprint of Scotland’s consumption overseas (Rivington et al., 2024) but are themselves a wide category of behaviours which warrant specific attention. Whilst the scope of pro-biodiversity behaviours is narrowed for the purposes of this review, we would encourage our findings to be interpreted in the context of the wider literature addressing low carbon and circular behaviours.

3.2 Developing a framework of behaviours relevant to Scotland

In this section we catalogue the different pro-biodiversity behaviours highlighted in the literature and explore the ways that these can be categorised to help make sense of the large number of potential actions that private citizens in Scotland can take to benefit biodiversity. In doing so we aim to draw out common characteristics of behaviours which may be relevant to consider when designing policy approaches.

Table 2 lists a total of 43 relevant pro-biodiversity behaviours that were identified from Phase 1 of the literature review, consolidated from an initial list of over 60 in-scope behaviours, and grouped into eight behaviour categories (see also Figure 3). Appendix C contains an expanded framework of behaviours, with each behaviour mapped against the following characteristics: behavioural domain, impact pathways, direct vs. indirect impacts, location of impacts, private/public/social sphere, and behavioural frequency. These characteristics are discussed in sections 3.2.1-3.2.6 below. These characteristics for the behavioural mapping were adopted based on the reviewed literature and drawing on the research teams’ knowledge of key concepts in the wider pro-environmental behaviour literature.

Figure 3. Eight pro-biodiversity behaviour categories

3.2.1 Behavioural domain

We classified behaviours into six domains: consumption, responsible outdoor recreation, stewardship, advocacy and social, and financial behaviours. These categories were adapted from those developed by Selinske et al. (2020) who used participatory methods to engage biodiversity and conservation experts in assessing pro-biodiversity behaviours relevant to the general public in Australia.

Table 2: Private citizens’ behaviours identified in the literature as impacting on biodiversity*

Behaviour category

Eating less meat