CEENRG Thursday seminars: 'Understanding the barriers & enablers to overcoming the attitude-behaviour gap in conservation action and policy'

Speaker: Arjun Kamdar (PhD Researcher, CEENRG, Department of Land Economy and El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy, University of Cambridge)

The Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy, and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG) is hosting a seminar series throughout the 2025- 26 academic year.

Biodiversity conservation is fundamentally about human behaviour. A persistent challenge is that attitudes toward conservation frequently fail to translate into behaviour. This attitude–behaviour gap (ABG) remains relatively understudied in conservation practice and policy. This study explores how experienced conservation academics and practitioners interpret the ABG and the proposed strategies to overcome it, also illustrating how they can be operationalised at individual and structural levels. Individual-level barriers include methodological difficulties in measuring attitudes accurately and social, cognitive, and political constraints. Organisational barriers include limited behavioural evidence and capacity, institutional inertia, and donor-driven metrics. Proposed solutions centre on choosing trusted messengers, building sustained academic-practitioner relationships, and targeting values and identity as levers of change. This paper underscores the need for transdisciplinary, behaviourally-informed approaches in conservation.

Seminars take place as hybrid meetings (in person seminars in the DAB - David Attenborough Building + online in Zoom) every Thursday (please check precise time as may vary) during the term. Please register online to receive the Zoom link on the day of the seminar. Everyone is welcome!