Assessing the Integration of Social Marketing Principles in Ivory Demand Management Interventions in China and Southeast Asia

Ivory demand perpetuates the unsustainable and illegal killing of African elephants. Consumer behavior has not been sufficiently addressed to halt the threat of ivory demand on vulnerable African elephant populations. Despite behavioral interventions being recognized as a crucial element of demand reduction and management, poor design and implementation have limited their effectiveness. In this study, we evaluate how consumer interventions in China and neighboring Southeast Asian countries that aimed to tackle demand for ivory align with best practices from the behavioral field of social marketing. We conducted a literature review to identify and analyze 55 interventions aimed at ivory consumers from 2008 to 2022. We used two social marketing frameworks to assess each intervention’s capacity to influence consumer behavior. We examined how social marketing principles are applied (even when implemented unknowingly) to understand their potential to affect ivory demand. To understand the context of the review findings, we undertook semi-structured interviews with five intervention practitioners to contextually ground review findings. We found that since 2018, the integration of social marketing principles has generally improved, coinciding with the greater adoption of consumer-insight driven strategies. However, the quality of social marketing practices remains weak due to ungrounded evidence, weak behavioral theory usage, and poor monitoring and evaluation standards. To contribute to long-term elephant conservation, demand management strategies must enhance the process quality of interventions, fully embedding social marketing principles. We suggest all IWT interventions consider integrating theory into intervention design, undertake primary or secondary research to enable evidence-led decision-making, conduct systematic monitoring, and use impact and process evaluation to understand behavior change.