Abstract
Bushmeat consumption persists in urban areas in the Neotropics, yet knowledge of its scale and the relative importance of cultural and economic factors in determining consumption and preference remain elusive. Moreover, the roles of cultural beliefs, social norms, and attitudes in driving urban bushmeat consumption are rarely evaluated. Therefore, we explored in this article the factors that influence consumption and preference for bushmeat in Amazonian towns. Given the availability of other sources of animal protein and the cultural and social importance of bushmeat in the region, we hypothesized that cultural attributes should be better predictors than economic factors of bushmeat consumption and preference. Data analysis involved fitting two-level mixed-effects regressions (random intercepts) to a structured sample of 227 individuals (99 households) from four towns in the Brazilian (Tabatinga and Atalaia do Norte) and Colombian (Leticia and Puerto Narino) Amazon. The results indicate that a third of the interviewees had consumed bushmeat in the past month, which had primarily been harvested by the family or received as a gift rather than obtained through trade. In general, both economic and cultural factors predicted bushmeat consumption and preference, but the objective proxy for culture, individual origin, was unimportant. Among the tested indicators, the strongest predictor was the importance of bushmeat to social relations. Moreover, informal social norms, such as the greater importance attributed to taboos, tended to decrease the average number of wild species that a person would eat, whereas attitudes toward the illegality of hunting were less important. The two economic indicators, increased income and wealth, tended to decrease preference for bushmeat and the likelihood of consumption. Our findings highlight the importance of human beliefs, attitudes, and social norms to the understanding of bushmeat consumption and preference and may contribute to the design of more effective and locally appropriate conservation and management strategies.
Highlights
Bushmeat, i.e., meat that predominantly comes from wild vertebrates, represents the primary source of protein in forested areas of the tropics (Fa et al 2002a, Milner-Gulland and Bennett 2003)
The opposite was true for men, who were more likely to have previously hunted in Brazil (64.5%) than in Colombia (40.7%; χ2 = 6.55, p = 0.010)
This finding confirms that, bushmeat may not be the main source of animal protein in the region, its consumption is common in Amazonian towns in Brazil (Baía-Júnior et al 2010, Parry et al 2014) and Peru (Bodmer and Lozano 2001)
Summary
I.e., meat that predominantly comes from wild vertebrates, represents the primary source of protein in forested areas of the tropics (Fa et al 2002a, Milner-Gulland and Bennett 2003). The answer to this question is less straightforward, understanding the drivers of urban bushmeat consumption is important because the demand from larger human populations represents a substantial threat to wild animals in natural areas (Wilkie and Carpenter 1999). In addition to affecting the sustainability of wild game populations, urban bushmeat consumption can threaten the food security of rural people, who most depend on wild game, by reducing the availability of the resource (Milner-Gulland and Bennett 2003, Nasi et al 2011). The current literature on the drivers of bushmeat consumption has predominantly approached this question within the framework of rational choice theory, which assumes that individuals have a more-or-less perfect perception of the world through which they make decisions in a social vacuum (Lunt 2006, Tucker 2007). When constrained by wealth and the availability of animal proteins, individuals will make consumptive choices that maximize their intake of their preferred species
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