Drivers of adoption and spread of wildlife management initiatives in Mexico
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Conservation initiatives rarely achieve the scale required to respond to ongoing biodiversity loss. Understanding what drives the adoption of conservation initiatives provides key insights into how initiatives expand to a scale necessary for effective conservation outcomes. In this article, we identified characteristics of conservation initiatives, adopters, and context that influenced the adoption of extensive Wildlife Management Units (UMAs) in Mexico. We interviewed 22 experts to gather their perceptions about the factors driving the adoption and spread of UMAs, and their interactions. We used Diffusion of Innovation Theory and qualitative data analysis to develop a theory of change based on the experts' perceptions that illustrates what led landholders to adopt UMAs. We found that: (a) the adoption of UMAs depended on the landholders' ability to learn about, register, and implement them; (b) alignment with the landholders' objectives and private tenure facilitated adoption, reflecting the likelihood and ease of participation, respectively; and (c) observability of benefits and the availability of technical advice were key to adoption, influencing the speed of adoption by facilitating learning. Our empirically derived theory of change describing the adoption of UMAs revealed focused and clear hypotheses that can be further tested quantitatively.
Date Issued
2021-07-01
Date Acceptance
2021-03-29
Citation
Conservation Science and Practice, 2021
ISSN
2578-4854
Publisher
Wiley Open Access
Journal / Book Title
Conservation Science and Practice
Volume
3
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Conservation Science and Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.438
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e438
Date Publish Online
2021-05-29