BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:A new approach to behaviour change with lessons for the illegal wi
 ldlife trade - Doug MacFarlane\, University of Western Australia
DTSTART:20181206T120000Z
DTEND:20181206T130000Z
UID:TALK110485@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:22612
DESCRIPTION:Consumer demand for unsupported health remedies present numero
 us harms including opportunity costs\, side effects\, financial costs\, an
 d is a significant driver of the illegal wildlife trade. Several psycholog
 ical drivers make people susceptible to fraudulent health claims. However\
 , efforts to tackle such beliefs and behaviours tend to be ad-hoc and/or n
 ot evidence-based. The result is that many interventions fail\, or even oc
 casionally backfire. Designing effective interventions requires incorporat
 ing psychological evidence to assist consumers to overcome the psychologic
 al barriers preventing them from making rational consumer decisions. Drawi
 ng on diverse disciplines including criminology\, cognitive psychology\, a
 nd behavioural economics my research aims to provide a congruent\, parsimo
 nious\, and falsifiable framework for designing treatments to overcome tho
 se barriers. We tested two predictions of our framework using an objective
  measure of consumer demand\, specifically\, a series of randomised contro
 lled experiments using incentivised experimental auctions. Our preliminary
  results show that—by targeting both the illusion of causality and the a
 ffect heuristic—our intervention reduced consumer willingness-to-pay for
  a common\, but unsupported\, health remedy by ~50%. This research has imp
 lications for how conservationists might reduce demand for traditional hea
 lth remedies made from body parts of endangered wildlife such as rhino hor
 n\, bear bile\, and pangolin scales.\n
LOCATION:David Attenborough Building\, New Museums Site\, Room 2.49
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR