Understanding the social impacts of enforcement activities on illegal wildlife trade in China.

ABSTRACT: Illegal wildlife trade enforcement is a cornerstone conservation strategy worldwide, yet we have a limited understanding on its social impacts. Using Chinese online wildlife seizure news (2003-2018), we evaluated the interactions among enforcement operations, news frequency, and social engagement (i.e., whistle-blowing) frequency. Our results showed that intensive enforcement operations, which commenced after 2012, have social impacts by increasing the frequency of all seizure news significantly by 28% [95% Confidence Interval (CI): 5%, 51%] and those via whistle-blowing by 24% [95% CI: 2%, 45%], when compared to counterfactual models where possible confounding factors were accounted for. Furthermore, we revealed the potential interaction between enforcement seizure news with and without s

SUBMITTER: Hu S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9110577 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature