A CONSERVATION MARKETING TOOLKIT: SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE MAPPING, MICROTARGETING CONSERVATION EASEMENTS, AND CONSERVATION CORRIDOR PRIORITIZATION

• Main Author: Leonard, Hannah Josie
• Format: Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Montana 2020
• Subjects: marketing; conservation; microtargeting; prioritization; wildlife; easement; Environmental Studies; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11683; https://scholarworks.umt.edu/context/etd/article/12772/viewcontent/auto_convert.pdf

In a changing world with limited resources for conservation efforts, conservationists, wildlife managers, and land managers must look for creative ways to realize conservation goals. A new wave of conservationists is investigating how other disciplines, namely psychology and marketing, might improve our ability to understand and change conservation-related human behavior. In this thesis, I review existing applications of “conservation marketing” and apply a subset to advance two specific conservation challenges. In Chapter 1, I present a systematic mapping of the conservation marketing literature to understand the lay of the land in how conservationists have already applied marketing techniques to conservation, and where the gaps and opportunities seem ripe for future research. In Chapter 2, I employ one specific marketing technique, microtargeting, to help advance efforts to secure conservation easements on private land. Using a suite of modeling and analysis techniques to estimate landowners’ willingness to participate in a conservation easement, I was able to nearly double easement predictive power over random. In Chapter 3, I apply these willingness scores to advance a contemporary conservation issue: conservation corridor prioritization. Specifically, I use the easement propensity scores derived from Chapter 2’s model results to evaluate three proposed conservation corridors for grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) migration between two isolated habitats in Western Montana. With this study, I hope to enhance the ways conservationists understand and use marketing techniques to achieve conservation goals more efficiently and effectively.