Our results show some support for the argument that a legal trade could shift the preference of a large proportion of consumers to legally supplied horns. However, the strong preference for wild rhino horns is a major concern. As a consequence, a legal trade would likely continue to face competition from a parallel black market.
AuthorMartin Reinhardt Nielsen
Martin Reinhardt Nielsen is an Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen.
Working with all aspects of the human dimensions of wildlife management my research addresses the ecological, economic and governance-related aspects of wildlife management. I focus primarily on hunting and its role in rural household welfare through the provision of dietary and economic support. This range from studying drivers of poaching and the organisation of the illegal bushmeat trade in Africa to the implications of climate change for subsistence whaling and traditional culture in the Arctic. I aim to contribute to the design of economic instruments and informed management strategies that balance the objectives of economic development with sustainable use of natural resources and conservation of biodiversity. Maintaining a focus on natural resource management policy, I have over the course of the past ten years increasingly shifted from working on case studies to global level surveys and from ecological to initially socioeconomic and lately macro-level determinants in my analysis. I primarily work quantitatively and teach courses on “Development Economics” and “Managing cross-sectional and spatial data in social science”. I supervise students in a wide range of subjects related to natural resource management.