Beyond the cooking pot and pocket book: Factors influencing noncompliance with wildlife poaching rules

Reducing the rate, extent, and negative impacts associated with poaching is a priority for diverse stakeholders including conservation practitioners and, increasingly, law enforcement agencies. The purpose of this paper is to explore local stakeholders' perceptions of poaching rules, and motivations for compliance and noncompliance, using focus groups and interviews in Namibia. We found no difference between participants' perception of the ability of regulatory and normative models to explain motivations to comply with wildlife rules; however, we found differences in the ability of moral and legitimacy-based normative models to explain compliance. Participants identified a diversity of motivations to poach; a number of motivations went beyond subsistence (“cooking pot”) and economic (“pocket book”) explanations of poaching. We suggest the criminological community capitalize on opportunities to collaborate with conservationists and others on exploring the various dimensions of poaching in order to reduce risks and environmental harm by minimizing rule breaking in conservation.