The Caged Bird Sings of Freedom: Using Social Norm Psychology to Counter Wild Songbird Trade in Viet Nam

Abstract

As our globe experiences its sixth mass extinction, it has become more and more apparent that without dramatic increases in conservation efforts, we will soon face biodiversity and ecosystem service losses so great that they threaten our very existence. Illegal wildlife trade serves as one of the primary contributors to global species loss, yet one extremely popular subset of wildlife trafficking is rarely addressed by modern environmental campaigns: wild songbird trade. The current study, which was conducted in collaboration with the nonprofit WildAct Vietnam, applies psychological theories revolving around norm-based messaging, pluralistic ignorance, and reality-testing to design and analyze a two-part study countering wild songbird trafficking in Viet Nam, one of the major wildlife trafficking hubs of the world. The first portion of this study consists of a survey that measured the strength of norms surrounding environment, law, public health, and animal welfare in Viet Nam and their corresponding levels of pluralistic ignorance. We found that while norms surrounding public health and law are equally popular amongst Vietnamese citizens, law-based norms have significantly higher levels of pluralistic ignorance, making them less resilient to reality-testing. We utilized insights from the norms survey to design, launch, and analyze large-scale anti-songbird-trafficking campaigns via Facebook advertisements in the second portion of our study. We aimed to weaken normative beliefs in favor of songbird keeping by strengthening norms of public health and law, which can be used to counter wild songbird trade as this trafficking spreads highly pathogenic diseases and is illegal. We hypothesized that, in accordance with reality-testing theories of behavior, a norm with little pluralistic ignorance–in this case public health–would outperform a norm with lots of pluralistic ignorance–in this case law–in drawing attention to and increasing interest in arguments against songbird trade. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found no statistically significant differences between our campaigns’ performance levels. This indicates that reality-testing, which has primarily been used to explain tangible behavior changes up until this point, may not be as applicable to interventions aimed at raising awareness and inspiring invisible behavior changes–like social media link clicks–as we had expected. Future environmental campaigns can build off this study to determine how social norms can be employed to most effectively encourage pro-environmental behaviors Keywords: wildlife trafficking, wildlife trade, wild songbird trade, songbirds, social norms, reality-testing, social media marketing, advertisements, Facebook, WildAct, Viet Nam