1. Projects

Reducing demand for illegal wildlife products

Why is this important to WWF?

Many wildlife species face the threat of poaching and illegal take as part of global and local wildlife trafficking operations. This can devastate species’ populations, destroy ecosystems, and upend the natural heritage and economic benefits that people value and rely on.

For decades, conservation efforts around the globe to counter wildlife trafficking have achieved some success, and methods to tackle the problem have been rapidly evolving. While anti-poaching efforts and policy engagement are vital parts of the solution, a critical component of ending the illicit slaughter and trade of wildlife is to stop consumer demand for their parts and products.

Growing prosperity and increased mobility of people in recent decades have brought exponential demand for live animals and plants and products made from wild species, including iconic animals such as elephants, rhinos, and tigers, as well as a wide array of primates, birds, reptiles, and others. The consumption and use of wildlife varies widely: live animals as pets, pelts for fashion items, tusks and horns for carvings and jewelry, and different body parts used in traditional medicinal and tonic applications.

Demand for wildlife and their products in Asia has been in the spotlight in recent years, since a lot of elephant ivory, rhino horn, tiger parts, and pangolin scales have been poached to meet specialized demand among the wealthy in countries such as China, Viet Nam, Thailand, and Indonesia. Some Asian consumers perceive wildlife products as luxury, exotic, special, healthy, or tokens of good fortune. Increasingly, social media has played a key role in promoting both fashionable and traditional trends in consumption of wildlife and their products.

What is WWF’s approach to reduce demand for illegal wildlife products?

WWF uses a mixture of awareness raising and behavior change tactics to influence consumers of illegal wildlife products. Meaningful behavior change takes focused and repetitive efforts over a long time. To that end, WWF’s demand reduction campaigns provide a continuous flow of educational information across various media channels and integrate methods to help increase knowledge about this issue. We strategically create tailored content that will drive specific consumption actions, change habits or attitudes of a target audience, and encourage a measurable shift in their behaviors.

Graphic showing steps taken to reduce demand: Pre-campaign survey, creative design, testing and revision, campaign launch, post-campaign survey

Prior to launch, we use a pre-campaign survey to better understand what motivates target audiences and use the results to guide and tailor the campaign design. After testing the draft designs with members of our target audience, we revise the materials based on their feedback before the campaign launch. At the conclusion of the project, we conduct a post-campaign survey to evaluate impacts against baselines.

How do we measure impact?

WWF uses a variety of ways to measure demand reduction campaign effectiveness and success.

Calculating a campaign’s total reach is a common way to evaluate effectiveness of interventions, and we do so through different methods:

  • For physical events, this might be looking at the number and category of event participants—such as non-governmental organizations, universities, and government agencies—or the volume and quality of media coverage.
  • For advertising, we could look at how often audiences see online ads, the number of physical billboards, digital screens, and posters, and the total traffic of all the ad spaces.
  • For social media outreach, we assess the number of impressions that all posts generate, audience engagement—such as likes, comments, and shares— pledges, and website traffic.

We also survey the target audience, collecting more sophisticated quantitative results that we compare against baseline data (using the same questions from the pre-launch survey) to gain more insights into the reach, influence, and impact of the campaign’s materials and messages. Pre- and post-survey responses cover:

  • A person’s likelihood to purchase a specific wildlife product in the future
  • Awareness and effectiveness of interventions
  • A person’s likelihood to share messages and information with friends, families, and community

When feasible, respondents in the post-campaign survey are divided into two groups: people who have seen the messaging and materials and people who have not. We analyze and compare their data. If their future intention and/or answers to other key questions show distinctions, it means the intervention has made a difference on people who have seen it.

Recent campaigns Explore WWF’s recent key campaigns to reduce consumer demand for illegal wildlife and their products.

Elephant ivory campaign in Viet Nam (2025)

WWF launched a communications campaign in Viet Nam to reduce demand for elephant ivory among local consumers and Chinese tourists during the Tết holiday, which is the Lunar New Year celebration that starts in late January. This annual holiday is the peak time for both gifting and traveling, during which people might purchase elephant ivory products.

In collaboration with the creative agency Ogilvy, WWF developed campaign materials that conveyed a strong message about the illegality of elephant ivory purchase and the consequence for consumers at the personal level.

Campaign results include:

  • 90+ participants joined the launch event from the CITES Management Authority of Viet Nam, the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism and other government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and media outlets on Feb. 13, 2025, at the Ba Vi National Park in Ha Noi.
  • 13 media stories generated by national media outlets.
  • 6.1 million impressions from the social media campaigns on Facebook to raise awareness among domestic consumers about the issues around elephant ivory product consumption.
  • 336 LED screens across 14 international airports displayed WWF outdoor ads, with an estimated close to 5 million daily impressions.
  • Eight large LED screens across four city centers, including Ha Noi, HCM City, Nha Trang, and Da Nang, displayed WWF outdoor ads, with an estimated over 8 million daily impressions.

The post-campaign evaluation results show that only 4.3% of travelers who saw the campaign still have interest in buying elephant ivory products in the future compared to 8.1% who did not see the campaign. In addition, among people who saw the campaign, 77% of them found the campaign messages useful, 71% thought the messages were clear and memorable, and 64% felt that the messages were informative.

Reducing high-risk wildlife consumption in Southeast Asia (2022)

To protect wildlife, nature, and public health, WWF ran a campaign called Zero Wild Meat between October and December 2022, targeting consumption of wild meat among urban and provincial consumers in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Lao PDR with the goal of reducing demand and consumptive behaviors. The campaign focused on wild meat consumed in restaurants, households, or marketplaces, and not in vulnerable, rural communities where livelihoods can depend on such consumption.

Ad run in Cambodia for the Zero Wild Meat campaign showing small mammal in a plate with a shadow on the wall that resembles bacteria© WWF
Zero Wild Meat Campaign Through a Behavior Change Lens Brochure
Zero Wild Meat Campaign

We conducted extensive research, design, testing, and planning, using tactics like recruiting people from different industries who could influence the target audience, seeking public pledges from consumers not to eat wild meat, asking restaurant owners to pledge not to serve wild meat and to promote the campaign in their establishments, and partnering with key government agencies. The campaign focused on physical and online locations where it is most likely to reach wild meat consumers, and the visuals and messages throughout the campaign changed to keep it fresh and engaging. As a result, the campaign had significant exposure and reach in the three countries.

Campaign results include:

  • Over 18 million social media impressions—the number of times the campaign appeared on screens within a social media platform.
  • More than 4,000 online pledges to #ZeroWildMeat by individuals.
  • 32 restaurants publicly announced they would no longer serve wild meat.
  • Over 200 media outlets covered the campaign after press conferences with national-level government partners.
  • 200 locations displayed billboards and digital ads, including government buildings, office buildings, shopping malls, restaurants, and markets.

The campaigns in Viet Nam and Lao PDR achieved measurable outcomes in changing wild meat eaters’ future intention to consume. The results showed 7% more wild meat eaters surveyed in Viet Nam and 15% more eaters surveyed in Lao PDR were likely to reject eating wild meat after being exposed to the campaign. Although these numbers may not seem large, given the modest scale of this campaign and how deeply consumption is embedded into the culture, it is in fact a significant outcome with great promise for public health efforts.

WWF Global Elephant Ivory Initiative (2018-2022)

Elephant Ivory Initiative Brochure
Elephant Ivory Initiative Report:
2018-2022

WWF’s Network-wide Elephant Ivory Initiative was launched after the game-changing decision by China in 2017 to shutter its domestic market for elephant ivory. The initiative involved two tightly linked and mutually reinforcing approaches, focused on reducing consumer demand and on policy engagement to strengthen laws and law enforcement. WWF was one of the key architects of the initiative, part of a collective drive alongside other non-governmental organizations, governments, businesses, and additional partners.

The Elephant Ivory Initiative’s biggest success came from focusing on reducing demand among Chinese consumers, the main demographic driving illegal elephant ivory trade. We have been working with GlobeScan, an independent consultancy, since 2017 to carry out research into the attitudes of Chinese consumers. This survey has been repeated every year since, providing valuable insights into changes in behavior and perceptions. It has also helped us evaluate the effectiveness of campaign messages.

Still from ad saying travel ivory free with young man with camera looking at elephant© WWF

Campaign results include:

  • 112 million times our precision-targeted content was seen by the target audience over three years.
  • 300 million total impressions after resharing by the target audience.
  • 7.8 million people made the online pledge to travel ivory free.

In 2021, self-reported purchases of elephant ivory among Chinese consumers that were surveyed by GlobeScan were lower than ever, at less than half the pre-ban level. And among regular overseas travelers, the proportion that intend to buy elephant ivory in the future fell from a high of 58% in 2018 to 43% in 2021.

After four years of successful work, focused on demand reduction and policy advocacy to shut down Asia’s elephant ivory markets, the initiative achieved in 2021 a 49% reduction in the number of Chinese consumers intending to buy ivory in the future compared to 2017.

 

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