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Guest Blog: Justine Pannett

In this blog Justine considers the pertinent question ‘Whose behaviour do you need to change?’

Whose behaviour do you need to change?

When thinking about behaviour change, it’s natural to focus on the end user.  But, as we - at the Cat Population Control Group - soon realised, there can be several audiences whose role you will need to consider in the behaviour change journey; and you’ll most likely need to do some behaviour change work with them, too.

One of the objectives of the Cat Population Control Group is to change public attitudes towards neutering - this was identified as a behavioural barrier to neutering. We’re starting to make some headway, for example in tackling the myth that female cats should have a litter of kittens before being spayed. However, in the process of developing our communications and marketing activities we identified an audience where some behavioural intervention was required - our very own internal communications and marketing teams.

Earlier this year I worked with the National Social Marketing Centre to deliver a seminar for animal welfare charity communications professionals about their role in delivering behaviour change. Social marketing, as a discipline, is commonplace in health charities where brand and social marketing teams work side by side but this way of working hasn’t yet reached the animal welfare charity sector.

Social marketing combines social science with commercial marketing techniques to deliver behaviour change for the good of individuals and society. The success of social marketing campaigns lies in seeing things from the perspective of the audience whose behaviour you want to change - and that audience in this case, as well as the end user, was our own communications teams. We needed to find a way to synchronise the needs of our communications teams to achieve good publicity for their respective organisations with our need to communicate in the right way to influence the audiences whose behaviour we seek to change.

For example, it’s easier to achieve headlines by talking about cat overpopulation but we know this is not a motivator for behaviour change. We also know that our target audience - people identified as less likely to neuter their cats - probably don’t read the broadsheet newspapers, yet these newspapers may be considered of greater headline value for our organisations.

The seminar was a great success and resulted in greater understanding among our communications teams about why a different approach to communications planning was needed when the focus was on behaviour change.

The take-out therefore is to consider the motivations and barriers of all stakeholders involved in your behaviour change programme - including internal stakeholders. Getting everyone joined up and working together within an organisation is critical to delivering effective behaviour change programmes.

The Cat Population Control Group comprises Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, the Blue Cross, Cats Protection, the Celia Hammond Animal Trust, International Cat Care, the Mayhew Animal Home, PDSA, RSPCA and Wood Green Animals Charity, and is supported by the University of Bristol.

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Guest blog - Catherine Bell

In this blog Dr Catherine Bell gives us an insight into the reasons why she developed the ‘Principles of Ethical Change’, which she will be talking about at the conference. 

The Individual Approach

I became interested in human behaviour while I was trying to understand the source of some problems I was having with my horse. It turned out - unsurprisingly, with hindsight - that it was more accurate to say that he was trying to understand the source of some problems he was having with me. The more I adapted my own behaviour, the easier it became for the problems to simply disappear. I was hooked, and my book-shopping took a dramatic turn towards the (quality!) self-help, the counselling, the academic and the business management.

I later realised that these same approaches I had taken to changing my behaviour were relevant in almost all situations where I have a client and horse to work with, in my capacity as either an equine behaviourist or an independent barefoot hoof trimmer. Improvements in the horse almost always require a change of behaviour in the human and, while some horse owners are only too happy to adapt as required by the horse, it is probably accurate to say that the majority are not.

Over the years I have found that finding a “preferred method" of human behaviour change is fairly futile. It is almost a cliche to point out the individuality of clients and horses, yet finding individual solutions is still the key. There is almost an infinite number of techniques, making the idea of scanning through them all to find the one most suited to a particular client an extremely daunting task.

Thankfully, help is at hand in the form of a framework summarising the major types of techniques for changing behaviour. In my conference talk, I describe this framework and demonstrate how we can filter out those techniques that are insufficiently ethical for use within the welfare section. Those techniques that remain fall into what I call “Principles of Ethical Change” and summarise the majority of how I interact with my clients for the sake of the horses.

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Guest blog: Joanna Hockenhull

Photo credit: Natasha Lee In this blog Dr Joanna Hockenhull explores the resistance she has encountered when trying to highlight equine welfare research to people who you would hope would be interested in the topic. 

Yes, it applies to you too!

One of the first challenges facing anybody attempting to motivate a change in human behaviour is getting the humans involved to recognise that what you are talking about does actually apply to them! This is especially true when you are acting in the interests of a third party – their animals.

It sounds so simple but a recent experience has made me realise just how difficult it is to get people’s attention when they are convinced that what you are blathering on about is for ‘other peoples’ benefit only. And getting their attention is far from the end of the story.

Following the launch of ‘Horses in our Hands’, a collaborative report into the welfare of horses in England and Wales by University of Bristol and World Horse Welfare, I brought a copy of the report down to my local livery yard to show the other liveries. The report was a summary of a four year research project and not specifically intended for owners or to promote any kind of behaviour change. However, I was surprised to find that only one person was remotely interested in the report - and as that was the owner of my part-loaned horse, this could well have been because she was humouring me. The others did not see how it was relevant to them. At all. To the extent that they left us discussing it and went off to have their coffee elsewhere. 

Fair enough you might say – at least I had caught the attention of one person whatever the reason! But very soon that went wrong too. As she read through the report she became more and more defensive over the choices she has made for her horse and her reasoning behind them. How dare the report imply that she may be compromising her horse’s welfare by the decisions she has made?! She loves him! Of course she wants what is best for him!I was completely taken aback by the strength of her reaction - after all, this was an objectively written, evidence-based research report. It hadn’t been written to allocate responsibility or blame, or to change anyone’s behaviour, simply to report equine stakeholders’ perceptions of equine welfare priorities. 

My interpretation of the report was very different. I found it interesting to learn about other people’s opinions on the welfare of equines, and I couldn’t see anything remotely judgemental about the way these opinions were presented. This may be because I was involved in the research upon which the report was based or perhaps it was because I do not own a horse myself and while I share Oscar had not been involved in any of the decisions regarding his day to day management. In all likelihood it was probably a combination of these reasons and more besides, but it demonstrated to me how careful you need to be about approaching, and portraying, the issue of animal welfare to animal owners or caregivers. And not just in the context of encouraging changes in how animals are looked after and treated, but in all information that touches on this area. Animal welfare is an emotive issue and it is all too easy to put people on the defensive without realising that was ever even a possibility.

For me, this experience has vividly highlighted the value of understanding human behaviour change, especially in the context of animal welfare improvement where it is starting to get recognition. Even when we are not trying to facilitate a behaviour change, using some of these skills will help us to communicate with our target audience without making them defensive and this can only benefit our cause. With the internet making information, reports and other documents more readily accessible it is more important than ever to think carefully about how information is written and communicated. It can be easy to get things wrong, for your words to provoke the opposite reaction to that you intended, to alienate people rather than bringing them onside, to make them defensive rather than making them think. Online information is also regularly taken out of context which may further compound the issue. We can learn so much from the experiences of other people working in this field. And what we learn and put into practice may help us to get it right – to get people’s attention, to get them onside and ultimately to get them changing their behaviour to improve their animal’s welfare.

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Guest blog: Sam Lipman

Photo: OrcaAware

Sam will be presenting a talk at the First International Conference on Human Behaviour Change for Animal Welfare in September. The case study of why the issue of cetaceans in captivity has recently gained so much attention, resulting in progressive steps towards the end of this inhuman industry, is interesting to consider from a human behaviour change perspective. 

Exploring human behaviour change towards captive orca welfare

Scientists and campaigners have spent more than four decades trying to end whale, dolphin and porpoise (cetacean) captivity. This is about as long as we have known that these marine mammals’ needs cannot be met in confinement – not in the largest tanks in the world. In the early 1990s, there was even a film about freeing an orca from captivity. The general public were so concerned about the captive Icelandic orca who portrayed ‘Willy’ in the film, the pressure from them so great, that the real whale was rehabilitated and released back into the wild. Then all fell quiet. The entertainment parks kept displaying cetaceans. Scientists and campaigners were still working to get them out. Additional indicators suggesting that the captives were suffering poor welfare kept on emerging, and the authorities that could do something for them didn’t. That all changed on February 24th 2010, when captive orca ‘Tilikum’ killed his trainer at SeaWorld Orlando in the US. Dawn Brancheau’s death was a catalyst for six years of change that has seen marine entertainment park attendance levels plummet, the resulting closure of some dolphinaria, and perhaps most surprisingly, SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment Inc.’s decision to end its keeping of orcas in captivity.

This shocking news from SeaWorld was unexpected, perhaps even for its staff. In an interview for the BBC Horizon documentary ‘Should We Close Our Zoos?’, SeaWorld’s Chief Zoological Officer, Chris Dold, expressed that SeaWorld would always showcase orcas. The documentary had to insert a slide with the update that this would no longer be the case, as it aired after SeaWorld made its announcement.

But why the sudden change? And so relatively quickly: More than four decades versus six years. For some reason, people cared when Tilikum killed his trainer. Something about this death – the third human death Tilikum has been involved in – struck a chord. Filmmakers, the media, scientists and campaigners who had previously not been involved with this issue, and perhaps most significantly, the general public, were interested in learning more; wanted to find out why Tilikum did it, especially when orcas do not attack humans in the wild. And something about the orca species specifically resonated with people, because Tilikum got a lot more attention than many other captive wild animals that have killed their zookeepers. Something about this orca killing this human lit a match that has turned the captive cetacean industry on its head, not just for orcas, but for other cetacean species in captivity too. Something that resulted in a powerful wave of human behaviour change, with individuals choosing to open their eyes to the unpleasant truth behind a multi-billion dollar entertainment business.

It is these “somethings”, these underlying causes of human behaviour change towards captive orca welfare, which myself and orca expert Dr. Ingrid Visser have recently been exploring. The First International Conference on Human Behaviour Change for Animal Welfare, taking place in the UK later this year, is providing a platform to present our observations. While there is still a long way to go to for captive orcas and other cetaceans, with many still being bred in captivity and captured from the wild for captive display, the positive welfare revolution we have seen worldwide so far can only serve to teach us how we can make this world a safer haven for non-human and human animals alike.

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Guest blog: Tamlin Watson

Tamlin will be presenting a talk at the First International Conference on Human Behaviour Change for Animal Welfare in September. One of the conference themes is working at the community level towards improvements in animal welfare. Tamlin provides an insight into her work in this blog post. 

Wild and Domestic Animals, Efforts to Ensure Lives are Enriched by the Presence of Humans 

In general most people tend to care about the environment they live in, even if it is the small environment they are in direct contact with every day. In general most people do not, knowingly, tend to want to do harm to animals in their care. There are other animals and environments that fall outside this remit, they are the wild places; the wild animals; those in conflict with humans or those which are just unregarded. Being a zoologist working in wild places for many years, then working with domestic animals, their behaviour, welfare and human-animal relationships, I found myself straddled between wild places and their animals, and humans and their domestic animals. Not a bad place to be, and certainly useful when it comes to making meaningful contributions towards conserving animals that are disliked in the Qur’aan and caught in conflict with humans. This applies to the Barbary macaques we have been trying to conserve in a small charity, Barbary Macaque Awareness and Conservation (BMAC), but also to the domestic free-ranging dogs whose welfare and quality of life we also sought to improve.

BMAC is a small charity dedicated to conserving endangered Barbary macaques (www.barbarymacaque.org). The project is based around the principle of inclusion of local people; of listening to and understanding their needs, and collaborating with them to create conservation strategies that work. Each of BMAC’s initiatives encompasses carefully designed, socially and culturally appropriate projects that tackle issues of Barbary macaque conservation on a case by case basis.

So what relationship do domestic dogs have to Barbary macaque conservation? Domestic dogs are used by shepherds to guard their flocks in the forest, these dogs are usually hungry and will spend at least some of their time in the forest either hunting wildlife for food or just for the chase. As a conservation organisation we knew we needed to address the large numbers of dogs being taken to the forest but needed a subtle way to bring about changes which would also bring benefits to the local inhabitants. Villagers complained to us about packs of feral dogs which were regularly attacking livestock. We suspected feral dogs were probably only responsible for a small proportion of the incidents so devised a programme which would benefit humans both by helping protect communities from zoonotic disease, namely rabies, which dogs are a primary vector for; and by providing evidence that there were issues with owned domestic dogs rather than solely feral dogs which would, we hoped, increase owner responsibility towards their dogs. This increased responsibility might, with some education and encouragement, help bring about better dog management and reduce dog populations. Reduced dog populations would improve welfare, reduce incidence of livestock attacks and also help to protect wildlife.

My research, though only a small pilot study, found that our intervention appeared to be successful. Local inhabitants no longer discussed feral dogs, they began to take only small numbers of dogs into the forest with their flocks and all dogs were now being castrated (from only one person castrating his own dogs throughout the three villages at the outset).

So what did we learn from this study? That human behaviour change is complex but with the right incentive and some subtle encouragement lives can be changed. Previously dogs were being shot or poisoned in government culls as the dog populations exploded, this impacted wild animals as poison tends to be indiscriminate but it also ignored owner’s needs as most dogs killed were probably owned. Perhaps our study will go some way to avoid the use of such tactics in future. What happens when people are given a voice? They feel empowered and respected which encourages them to engage and collaborate……and good things happen.

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Guest blog: Georgina Allen

In the run up to the conference, speaker Georgina Allen from Wild Welfare explains how she is using an understanding of human behaviour in her work.

Using an understanding of human behaviour change to improve the welfare of animals in zoos

In September, I’ll be presenting on behalf of Wild Welfare at the first ever International Human Behaviour Change For Animal Welfare Conference.  This is an exciting opportunity to explore, discuss and debate approaches to changing human behaviour and attitudes towards animal welfare. This is something that is highly relevant to the work we are doing in zoos and aquariums.

Historically, zoo animal welfare improvements have taken a standard approach: a survey of the facility is carried out, areas of concern are identified and advice on improvement is offered.   Appropriate training may follow, on, for example, animal enrichment, husbandry practices, record keeping or practical handling and care.  Often however, despite such efforts, poor animal care and welfare continues.

Sub-standard animal care and poor welfare is often attributed to a lack of resources and proper investment. However in my experience, while limited resources can affect the level of care provided, many cases of poor animal welfare and suffering in zoos are rarely wholly down to this “hardware” problem. They are also caused by the “software” problem - the people in charge of caring for the animals and their attitude towards this role.  Apathy and a lack of interest and/or engagement in their duty of care to the animals are amongst the reasons why poor animal welfare perseveres. However, before criticising we should remember that many of these staff have not had access to the appropriate education, are paid a minimal salary and are offered nothing else by way of incentive to carry out their jobs.

While this apathy exists, so will poor animal welfare.  The phrase “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” springs to mind when discussing the importance of human behaviour change and its essential role in improving animal welfare. One can provide the resources, training or other means to encourage improvements, but essentially it is up to those individuals caring for the animals as to whether they want to use those resources or take that advice - and this is where the encouragement of changes in attitude and behaviour comes into play.  

So what can be done? How do we challenge this indifference and how can we create a learning environment that encourages a significant shift in attitude and behaviour towards animal care? Instilling confidence, encouraging inclusivity and creating learning environments based on solving problems (rather than basic direct instruction) all help encourage change. But perhaps the most important tool is to encourage a connection between the people and animals. Empathy helps breed compassion and understanding. People act on the things they care about and understand.

By providing novel training programmes that compare the emotional similarities between humans and animals and demonstrating how practical husbandry care can support positive emotions and welfare, we can produce an objective but emotionally involved response that improves attitudes towards animal care.  Such training programmes can inspire a cultural change in the sub-standard zoo and aquarium approach to welfare management.

I am looking forward to sharing my experiences and thoughts at the conference and also taking the opportunity to learn more from others working in a similar field.  

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Guest blog: Jenni Nellist

Jenni will be presenting a poster on this work at the First International Conference on Human Behaviour Change for Animal Welfare in September. One of the conference themes is understanding why people do the things they do, their attitudes and perceptions regarding their behaviour towards animals. Jenni gives us a insight into her work in this blog post.

For the love of my horse. Why experience matters when it comes to choosing horse training method

People care about their horses. Or at least, the people I meet in my capacity as an equine behaviour and training consultant care about how their horses feel. Feeling that their horse is in some way frightened, stressed and unhappy is a big driver in finding new solutions. They pick up the phone and call me, and I go and show them how they can change their situation. They are already involved in their horse, and so change comes easily for them. Before I investigated this further, this feature of the relationship between horse and owner was intrinsic; it had not yet reached my conscious appreciation.

Horse owners I interviewed for my pilot investigation into the effects of horse training method on horse welfare and the horse-human relationship made their choices based on how they felt their horse felt. How the horse felt about training was important in determining the success of any attempt to train them, regardless of the actual activity engaged in. An unhappy horse set off a process of problem solving by process of elimination: trialling tried and trusted techniques, talking to their friends and familiar professionals, and then reaching further afield, to the internet, books and magazines. This process went in cycles, always referring back to the horse to determine success or failure. Delving further with my investigation, I set up the opportunity for horse owners to trial three ways of training the same behaviour in three of their own horses. To teach each horse to lower their head for food, pressure release plus food, or pressure release alone. I gave basic instruction, without divulging technical information that might influence my participants beyond the simple experience. Just from watching I could see that my human participants preferred to give food, because they felt they were rewarding their horse. One owner hated using pressure release alone because it made her feel mean. All of the owners rated higher levels of equine enjoyment when using food compared to only using pressure release – even though all three methods were equally effective in getting the desired behaviour from the horse. The horse’s feelings and enthusiasm for the activity mattered.

There was a dark side though. Even although the food rewards generated such positive feelings, and did result in two out of the three human participants seeking tuition in reward based training for their horses after the study was over, there was an elephant in the room. The food taboo. The power of traditional beliefs and community belonging cannot be underestimated, and I believe they can trump an owner’s feel for their horse, and only experiencing the horse’s feelings can overcome this. More than one participant stated that it was ‘wrong’ to use food to train the horse, even though they never declared the reason why. There was guilty feeling for having trained so successfully with food, but it didn’t necessarily stop them from doing so, or there would have been no lessons later!

The next step (apart from further study to scientifically validate such preliminary findings) is to solve the problem – how can we provide a wider experience of horsemanship practice, so that owners can choose with their (horse’s) heart?

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What do we mean by human behaviour change?

This blog explores the different elements of human behaviour change and why many of us working in animal welfare believe that we can benefit from learning about human, as well as animal, behaviour.  

The root cause of much animal suffering is human behaviour. However, traditional approaches to improving animal welfare have focussed on providing a service, such as accessible veterinary treatment, or campaigning for people to change their consumer habits. The understanding of why people do what they do, don’t do what you’d like them to, and more often than not do not change their behaviour, is the holy grail of anyone with something to sell, a campaign to promote or a desire to improve the world. For this reason human behaviour change has been studied by experts in marketing, psychology, development, and health and education programmes – understanding human behaviour is important for anyone with an interest in helping the world to be a better place for humans or animals. The output of this huge body of work can be roughly summarized into four pillars:   the process of change; the psychology of change; the environment for change; and ownership of change.

The process of change

What causes people to change their behaviour has been studied from many different angles and the answer is different depending on which aspect has been investigated. There are many useful theories to explore – for example theory of change considers what is needed for change by identifying causes of each milestone. It is a process used to create a strategy and can also be done retrospectively to understand how change happened. This approach is becoming increasingly used in strategic planning of animal welfare projects.  

The transtheoretical model outlines ‘stages of change’ in individuals through five stages (pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance). This model includes ten processes of change – overt and covert activities that people use to progress through the stages. Other models depict change as less linear with feedback loops and cycles. This concept is useful for people working with individual clients such as vets and behaviourists.

The main elements considered in the overall process of change are the triggers for behaviour change, the connections between the points and whether they can be mapped to better facilitate change. These elements can be applied at all levels from individuals to mass behaviour change.

The psychology of change

This pillar explores areas such as how much change is someone’s autonomous decision and how much is as a result of influence by others; how the mind works in processing new information; what factors affect our motivation for change; how barriers for change are often very deep-seated beliefs and values and how to best address this, and much more. If we have a better understanding of what motivates and influences people we can apply the knowledge directly to our work. There are different ‘camps’ in this field, each disagreeing about the primary drivers and how they interact, but it is useful to understand each perspective in the search for the best match for your work.

Understanding the motivation for change and how new behaviours are deserted or maintained is necessary in planning effective projects. An understanding of the relationship between behaviour change of individuals and how that translates to increasing the dissemination of information and change throughout a community is vital in planning and adapting projects that rely on the spread of best practices.  

Creating an environment to change

How do you facilitate change, break down barriers, create social trends, and encourage new dialogue that becomes the norm? Social marketing is the main discipline to look to for the answers. Well-used in the health and environmental sectors, social marketing identifies barriers to change, proposes solutions, works to enable change by providing a suitable environment and uses concepts from group psychology to drive social change. Social marketing is mostly relevant for ‘mass’ change but can also be used on a smaller scale to encourage take up and spread of ideas through communities.  

Ownership of change

There is a saying “Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I truly understand”, which perfectly illustrates this pillar of change. People need to truly appreciate the relevance of the desired behaviour change to them for change to happen.  If we understand that people learn and change if they are not told what to do through resources or typical top-down educational outreach, not just shown what to do through demonstration, but are truly involved in the process of change, we can facilitate that change. This process involves enabling people and communities to explore issues and come up with solutions themselves rather than ‘train them’ to implement a preconceived solution.

There are differences of preferred strategy in how to best introduce participatory approaches into projects and to what level the preliminary research is done in a participatory manner. Also, the extent to which communities are given autonomy in a project varies given that the aim of the organisations introducing the approach generally have their own goals to meet, such as improving animal welfare rather than starting a process that could lead to an increase in concerns for animals where human and animal needs conflict.

Positive deviance also comes under this pillar - an approach based on the observation that even though most individuals or groups in a community usually have access to the same resources or face similar challenges, some find better solutions than others. The community-driven approach enables people to discover these successful behaviours in their communities and develop a plan of action of dissemination.

Summary

These pillars reflect my personal understanding of the concepts that underpin what is included in the study of human behaviour change, there are many alternative ways they could be categorised and there is considerable overlap.

The conference will explore all these elements and include ‘in a nutshell’ five-minute presentations throughout the event covering the different theories and approaches used, alongside the presentation selected from the submitted abstracts. The most obvious challenge in putting together the agenda for the conference will be to apply what we know about human behaviour to encourage delegates to apply what they learn to their projects!  

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