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Using social marketing concepts to promote the integration of systematic conservation plans in land-use planning in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2013

Angelika Wilhelm-Rechmann*
Affiliation:
Department of Botany, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Richard M. Cowling
Affiliation:
Department of Botany, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Mark Difford
Affiliation:
Department of Botany, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
*
(Corresponding author) E-mail a.rechmann@mweb.co.za
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Abstract

Local land-use planning procedures are increasingly recognized as potentially crucial to ensure off-reserve biodiversity protection. Mainstreaming systematic conservation planning maps in these decision-making procedures has been proposed as a mechanism to achieve this. However, research is lacking on how to convince officials and politicians to change their behaviour and include the maps in their decision-making. Social marketing is a tool commonly used to effect behaviour change in many sectors but its application in conservation is limited. In the formative research phase of a social marketing study we interviewed locally elected politicians in four coastal municipalities in South Africa. We found that conservation and environmental issues play virtually no role in their work; however, they do attribute value to the natural environment. Land-use planning procedures are considered important but dysfunctional and the role of conservation is perceived negatively in their municipalities. Their information-seeking behaviour is clearly localized. We present a marketing analysis of these results and argue for improving the attractiveness of the product: the maps should be more option- than veto-based and should identify locally relevant ecosystem services. Locally significant information should be provided at a time and location convenient for politicians. We conclude that engagement with councillors should be proactive, refer to land-use planning and services from ‘nature’ rather than ‘biodiversity’ and use terminology and information that is locally oriented and meaningful from the politician's perspective. The analysis highlights the usefulness of the marketing approach for conservation.

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Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Fauna & Flora International 2013 
Figure 0

Fig. 1 Example of the conservation planning maps used in this project. Conservation priority maps of (a) the entire STEP planning region and (b) the Kouga Municipality (as published in Pierce et al., 2005).

Figure 1

Fig. 2 Bradley–Terry paired comparison model of councillors' priorities. The horizontal line at 0.143 shows the mean worth of all priorities.

Figure 2

Fig. 3 Path diagram of councillors' priorities. Priorities that influence other priorities are shown using a directed arrow (→), with the arrow pointing in the direction of influence. Solid arrows show positive influence, broken arrows show negative influence. Arrow thickness is proportional to the level of confidence. The associated values show the magnitude of the influence if all other influences are held constant.

Supplementary material: PDF

Wilhelm-Rechmann Supplementary Material

Supplementary Material

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