The rapidly increasing rate of biodiversity and habitat loss across the globe can be largely attributed to human behaviors. Conservation practitioners have struggled to influence behaviors through traditional awareness-raising efforts and been slow to adopt techniques from the behavioral sciences such as social marketing to change behaviors and improve conservation outcomes. We conducted a meta-analysis of 84 social marketing campaigns that applied the same theory of change for human behavior to disrupt patterns of destructive activities such as illegal hunting and overfishing. Questionnaires of more than 20,000 individuals across 18 countries measured changes in behavioral variables pre- and post-campaigns, including knowledge, attitudes, interpersonal communication, behavior intention, and behavior. For each campaign, we extracted data and validated data for behavioral variables, estimated mean effect sizes for each variable across all campaigns, and used path analysis to measure relationships among variables included in seven different models. On average, all behavioral variables increased significantly (p < .001) from 16.1 to 25.0 percentage points following social marketing campaigns. The full model used a combination of all variables and had the highest explained variation in behavior change (71%). Our results highlight the importance of (a) incorporating behavioral theory and social marketing into traditional conservation programs to address threats to biodiversity across the globe; (b) designing interventions that leverage a combination of community knowledge, attitudes, and communication about a behavior; and (c) facilitating more opportunities for interpersonal communication as a main driver of behavior change. We conclude with potential applications for practitioners interested in behavior change campaigns.

中文翻译：

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社会营销活动以改善全球保护成果的荟萃分析

全球范围内生物多样性和生境丧失的迅速增加，在很大程度上可以归因于人类的行为。养护从业人员一直难以通过传统的提高意识的努力来影响行为，并且缓慢地采用诸如社会营销之类的行为科学技术来改变行为并改善养护成果。我们对84个社会营销活动进行了荟萃分析，这些运动将相同的变化理论应用于人类行为，以破坏破坏性活动的模式，例如非法狩猎和过度捕捞。来自18个国家/地区的20,000多人进行了问卷调查，评估了运动前后行为变量的变化，包括知识，态度，人际交往，行为意图和行为。对于每个广告系列，我们提取了行为变量的数据和经过验证的数据，估算了所有广告系列中每个变量的平均效应大小，并使用路径分析来衡量七个不同模型中变量之间的关系。平均而言，社交营销活动后，所有行为变量均从16.1到25.0个百分点显着增加（p <.001）。完整模型使用了所有变量的组合，并具有最高的行为变化解释率（71％）。我们的结果强调了（a）将行为理论和社会营销纳入传统的保护计划中以应对全球范围内对生物多样性的威胁的重要性；（b）设计干预措施，将社区知识，态度和行为交流结合起来；（c）促进更多的人际交流机会，将其作为行为改变的主要驱动力。我们以对行为改变运动感兴趣的从业者的潜在应用作为结束。