Asking sensitive questions in conservation using Randomised Response Techniques

Conservation increasingly seeks knowledge of human behaviour. However, securing reliable data can be challenging, particularly if the behaviour is illegal or otherwise sensitive. Specialised questioning methods such as Randomised Response Techniques (RRTs) are increasingly used in conservation to provide greater anonymity, increase response rates, and reduce bias. A rich RRT literature exists, but successfully navigating it can be challenging. To help conservationists access this literature, we summarise the various RRT designs available and conduct a systematic review of empirical applications of RRTs within (n = 32), and beyond conservation (n = 66). Our results show increased application of RRTs in conservation since 2000. We compare the performance of RRTs against known prevalence of the sensitive behaviour and relative to other questioning techniques to assess how successful RRTs are at reducing bias (indicated by securing higher estimates). Findings suggest that RRT applications in conservation were less likely than those in other disciplines to provide prevalence estimates equal to, or higher than those derived from direct questions. Across all disciplines, we found reports of non-compliance with RRT instructions were common, but rarely accounted for in study design or analysis. For the first time, we provide conservationists considering RRTs with evidence on what works, and provide guidance on how to develop robust designs suitable for conservation research contexts. We highlight when alternate methods should be used, how to increase design efficiency and improve compliance with RRT instructions. We conclude RRTs are a useful tool, but their performance depends on careful design and implementation

Experimental Validation of Specialised Questioning Techniques in Conservation

Conservation increasingly relies on social science tools to understand human behavior. Specialized questioning techniques (SQTs) are a suite of methods designed to reduce bias in social surveys and are widely used to collect data on sensitive topics, including compliance with conservation rules. Most SQTs have been developed in Western, industrialized, educated, rich, and democratic countries, meaning their suitability in other contexts may be limited. Whether these techniques perform better than conventional direct questioning is important for those considering their use. We designed an experiment to validate the performance of four SQTs (unmatched count technique, randomized response technique, crosswise model, and bean method) against direct questions when asking about a commonly researched sensitive behavior in conservation, wildlife hunting. We developed fictional characters, and for each method asked respondents to report the answers that each fictional character should give when asked if they hunt wildlife. We collected data from 609 individuals living close to protected areas in two different cultural and socioeconomic contexts (Indonesia and Tanzania) to quantify the extent to which respondents understood and followed SQT instructions and to explore the sociodemographic factors that influenced a correct response. Data were modeled using binomial general linear mixed models. Participants were more likely to refuse to answer questions asked using SQTs compared with direct questions. Model results suggested that SQTs were harder for participants to understand. Demographic factors (e.g., age and education level) significantly influenced response accuracy. When sensitive responses to sensitive questions were required, all SQTs (excluding the bean method) outperformed direct questions, demonstrating that SQTs can successfully reduce sensitivity bias. However, when reviewing each method, most respondents (59–89%) reported they would feel uncomfortable using them to provide information on their own hunting behavior, highlighting the considerable challenge of encouraging truthful reporting on sensitive topics. Our results demonstrate the importance of assessing the suitability of social science methods prior to their implementation in conservation contexts

Ethical considerations when conservation research involves people

Social science is becoming increasingly important in conservation, with more studies involving methodologies that collect data from and about people. Conservation science is a normative and applied discipline designed to support and inform management and practice. Poor research practice risks harming participants, researchers, and can leave negative legacies. Often, those at the forefront of field‐based research are early‐career researchers, many of whom enter their first research experience ill‐prepared for the ethical conundrums they may face. Here, we draw on our own experiences as early‐career researchers to illuminate how ethical challenges arise during conservation research that involves human participants. Specifically, we discuss ethical review procedures, conflicts of values, and power relations, and provide broad recommendations on how to navigate ethical challenges when they arise during research. We encourage greater engagement with ethical review processes and highlight the pressing need to develop ethical guidelines for conservation research that involves human participants.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin

Detecting deterrence from patrol data

The threat posed to protected areas by the illegal killing of wildlife is countered principally by ranger patrols that aim to detect and deter potential offenders. Deterring poaching is a fundamental conservation objective, but its achievement is difficult to identify, especially when the prime source of information comes in the form of the patrols’ own records, which inevitably contain biases. The most common metric of deterrence is a plot of illegal activities detected per unit of patrol effort (CPUE) against patrol effort (CPUE-E). We devised a simple, mechanistic model of law breaking and law enforcement in which we simulated deterrence alongside exogenous changes in the frequency of offences under different temporal patterns of enforcement effort. The CPUE-E plots were not reliable indicators of deterrence. However, plots of change in CPUE over change in effort (ΔCPUE-ΔE) reliably identified deterrence, regardless of the temporal distribution of effort or any exogenous change in illegal activity levels as long as the time lag between patrol effort and subsequent behavioral change among offenders was approximately known. The ΔCPUE-ΔE plots offered a robust, simple metric for monitoring patrol effectiveness; were no more conceptually complicated than the basic CPUE-E plots; and required no specialist knowledge or software to produce. Our findings demonstrate the need to account for temporal autocorrelation in patrol data and to consider appropriate (and poaching-activity-specific) intervals for aggregation. They also reveal important gaps in understanding of deterrence in this context, especially the mechanisms by which it occurs. In practical applications, we recommend the use of ΔCPUE-ΔE plots in preference to other basic metrics and advise that deterrence should be suspected only if there is a clear negative slope. Distinct types of illegal activity should not be grouped together for analysis, especially if the signs of their occurrence have different persistence times in the environment

Experimentally assessing the effect of search effort on snare detectability

Reducing threats to biodiversity is the key objective of ranger patrols in protected areas. However, efforts can be hampered by rangers' inability to detect threats, and poor understanding of threat abundance and distribution in a landscape. Snares are particularly problematic due to their cryptic nature and limited selectivity with respect to captured animals' species, sex, or age. Using an experimental approach, we investigated the effect of search effort, habitat, season, and team on rangers' detection of snares in a tropical forest landscape. We provide an effort-detection curve, and use our findings to make preliminary predictions about snare detection under different scenarios of patrol effort. Results suggest that the overall probability of a searcher detecting any given snare in a 0.25/km2 area, assuming 60 min (or approximately 2 km) of search effort is 20% (95% CI ± 15–25%), with no significant effect of season, habitat or team. Our models suggested this would increase by approximately 10% with an additional 30mins/1 km of search effort. Our preliminary predictions of the effectiveness of different patrolling scenarios show that detection opportunities are maximised at low effort levels by deploying multiple teams to a single area, but at high effort levels deploying single teams becomes more efficient. Our results suggest that snare detectability in tropical forest landscapes is likely to be low, and may not improve dramatically with increased search effort. Given this, managers need to consider whether intensive snare-removal efforts are the best use of limited resources; the answer will depend on their underlying objectives

Topic sensitivity still affects honest responding, even when specialised questioning techniques are used

To develop more effective interventions, conservationists require robust information about the proportion of people who break conservation rules (such as those relating to protected species, or protected area legislation). Developed to obtain more accurate estimates of sensitive behaviours, including rule-breaking, specialised questioning techniques such as Randomised Response Techniques (RRTs) are increasingly applied in conservation, but with mixed evidence of their effectiveness. We use a forced-response RRT to estimate the prevalence of five rule-breaking behaviours in communities living around the Ruaha-Rungwa ecosystem in Tanzania. Prevalence estimates obtained for all behaviours were negative or did not differ significantly from zero, suggesting the RRT did not work as expected and that respondents felt inadequately protected. To investigate, we carried out a second study to explore how topic sensitivity influenced respondents’ propensity to follow RRT instructions. Results from this experimental study revealed respondents understood instructions well (~88% of responses were correct) but that propensity to follow RRT instructions was significantly influenced by the behaviour asked about, and the type of answer they were required to provide. Our two studies highlight that even if RRTs are well understood by respondents, where topics are sensitive and respondents are wary of researchers, their use does not necessarily encourage more honest responding. Here we include anonymised datasets from both studies, along with the survey instruments (XLS forms uploaded into ODK, which were adminstered face-to-face by interviewers). </p

Searching for snares - How much effort is enough?

The use of wire snares to hunt wildlife is prolific, particularly in the forests of Southeast Asia (1). Tackling this threat is a primary objective of law enforcement operations throughout protected areas, yet often efforts to remove snares are thwarted by a lack of information about hunter behaviour and an inability to detect snares. Even in areas of high snare abundance, rangers can spend many hours searching for snares with few results, eroding ranger morale, motivation and resources. Understanding how best to allocate ranger search effort is of critical importance for protected area managers, especially in sites with exponential levels of snare hunting. Few studies systematically assess the factors that affect snare distribution (2), or explore efficiency in snare removal. Often studies rely on ranger-collected data through systems such as SMART. Whilst this data is undoubtedly useful for monitoring, data analyses typically fail to account for underlying biases, resulting in misleading conclusions being drawn. Here we present a conceptual framework for evaluating the factors that influence snare detection by rangers. An experiment to calculate snare detectability in eastern Cambodia, carried out by Dr Hannah O&#039;Kelly in 2011, achieved an average snare detection rate of about 30%, with variation between habitat and snare types. We introduce an experimental design which builds on that study (3), and aims to quantify how snare detectability varies with ranger search effort, whilst controlling for factors such as season, habitat, and ranger morale. We present our results, and detail the wider impact of the research for protected area management. References (1) GRAY, T.N.E., HUGHES, A.C., LAURANCE, W.F., LONG, B., LYNAM, A.J., KELLY, H.O., ET AL. (2017) The wildlife snaring crisis: an insidious and pervasive threat to biodiversity in Southeast Asia. Biodiversity and Conservation, 1–7. (2) O’KELLY, H.J., ROWCLIFFE, J.M., DURANT, S.M. &amp; MILNER-GULLAND, E. (2018) Robust estimation of snare prevalence within a tropical forest context using N-mixture models. Biological Conservation, 217, 75–82 (3) O’KELLY, H.J., ROWCLIFFE, J.M., DURANT, S. &amp; MILNER-GULLAND, E. (2018) Experimental estimation of snare detectability for robust threat monitoring. Ecology and Evolution, DOI: 10.10, 1–8.peerReviewe