By F.M. Tavolaro, M.J. O’Riain, Z. Woodgate, C. Brown, and F.A.V. St John
In Namibia, the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme allows people living on communal land to form community-run conservation areas, known as communal conservancies, where they manage and benefit from wildlife. Members are encouraged to report within 24 hours to community game guards or conservancy offices when predators such as hyena kill livestock. In some cases, farmers may receive monetary offsets if they had taken steps to protect their animals. Farmers are also legally allowed to kill predators if they catch them in the act of attacking livestock, if the farmers report the incident within 24 hours to the relevant authorities. These two actions (reporting and killing) are central to how people cope with costs of living with wildlife.
In our study, we wanted to understand what shapes farmers’ decisions to report livestock losses and legally kill hyena, both inside and outside conservancies. To do this, we looked at how people’s attitudes, what they think others think they should do, how much control they feel they have over their actions, and what they believe others do shape their intentions.
We surveyed over 1,100 farmers from both governance contexts. Most farmers (around 9 out of 10) said they did not intend to a kill hyena found attacking their cattle, and this did not differ much between conservancy and non-conservancy members. However, when it came to reporting incidents, there was a clear difference, 90% of farmers inside conservancies intended to report, compared to 78% outside conservancies. We also found that the reasons behind people’s choices were different between the two groups. For conservancy members, their attitudes (for example, whether they saw reporting as a good thing) were the strongest predictor of their intentions. For farmers outside conservancies, their sense of control over whether they could act or not was more important (we call this “perceived behavioural control”).
Understanding what drives the two behaviours shows that different strategies may be needed to support farmers depending on their governance context. By targeting the social and psychological factors that shape behaviour, we can design better interventions to reduce killing of predators and improve reporting to support both people and wildlife.
Relational Thinking 