Public willingness to engage in backyard conservation in New Zealand: Exploring motivations and barriers for participation

Citizen science and participatory conservation offer benefits to urban wildlife and help foster human–nature relationships in cities. To optimize conservation and social outcomes it is important that initiatives appeal to participants of a wide range of sociodemographic backgrounds. However, this can be challenging when motivation and willingness to undertake activities are influenced by socioecological context. In New Zealand, where control of invasive mammalian predators is a predominant strategy for conservation, trapping of rodents and mustelids has become a popular form of backyard conservation.

To understand how the appeal of pest trapping compares with that of other conservation activities, we investigated relationships between sociodemographic characteristics of participants and willingness to undertake three different backyard conservation activities (trapping of pest mammals, monitoring of pest mammals and monitoring of native animals). We also examined barriers and motivations for participating in these activities.