The critically endangered saiga antelope saiga SPP is hunted for its horn, which is used as an ingredient in traditional asian medicines unsustainable and illegal hunting has led to significant…

The critically endangered saiga antelope saiga SPP is hunted for its horn, which is used as an ingredient in traditional asian medicines unsustainable and illegal hunting has led to significant declines in saiga populations, and as a result, no legal international trade in wild saiga products has been permitted since 2019 however, legal domestic markets in some countries still exist, and recent customs seizures show that illegal trade is still taking place reducing consumer demand for saiga horn medicinal products is a conservation priority, but little is known about consumer behaviour in key importing countries such as japan, where the horn is used in several over the counter medicines another major consumer country, singapore, has been the focus of recent saiga horn consumer studies, which underpinned work to reduce demand amongst a key consumer group while this showed promising results, further work in singapore is needed to understand how saiga horn consumption may have changed since the covid 19 pandemic, and how behaviour change work can be expanded to have greater impact in this project we aim to reduce demand for saiga horn products in japan and singapore by first collecting information about consumer behaviour in both countries to identify the main drivers of consumption we will then use this information to design and implement interventions in both countries to change consumer behaviour, and reduce saiga horn use in singapore, we will conduct focus groups with key groups of saiga horn consumers identified during previous projects, that will examine if and how consumption has changed since the start of the covid 19 pandemic we will use this updated information to run workshops where we will ask consumers to discuss their views towards different behaviour change approaches, and CO design ideas for potential future interventions that they believe could be effective based on the results of the CO design workshops and the drivers of behaviour identified, we will then choose a small number of interventions based on feasibility, expected impact, country specific context, and resources available we will implement these interventions, and then evaluate the results with a rigorous mixed methods impact evaluation framework this will include a questionnaire based quasi experimental approach using counterfactuals, and a theory based evaluation where we will use expert and stakeholder knowledge to develop a participatory theory of change and better understand the causal links or lack thereof between the intervention and the outcomes of interest in japan, we will use a national survey to find out, for the first time, how many people use saiga horn products, who they are, and what might affect their consumption decisions we will then use a combination of tried and tested and cutting edge methods to identify different segments of saiga horn consumers, and prioritise those groups who would be the most suitable target audiences for behaviour change work mirroring our work in singapore, we will hold CO design workshops with these priority consumer groups to produce ideas for potential behaviour change intervention designs in japan we will then implement and evaluate these interventions using the same methodology as in singapore our two phase project will allow up to date best practice and lessons learned from singapore to be applied directly to the intervention in japan we will ensure that our findings, intervention designs, and lessons learned are shared widely, to raise the profile of saiga horn as a wildlife trade issue, and allow key stakeholders working to manage wildlife trade, such as policymakers, ngos and researchers, to carry out similar demand reduction in other saiga consumer countries