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