The same data used by digital marketers to sell products can also help inspire conservation behaviors, according to new research from the University of Montana.
The same data used by digital marketers to sell products can also help inspire conservation behaviors, according to new research from the University of Montana.
In a recent study, “Microtargeting for Conservation,” published in Conservation Biology, UM faculty in the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conversation demonstrate how conservation programs can benefit from tools and analyses generally reserved for businesses and political campaigns.
Researchers with UM, Penn State University, Chesapeake Conservancy and the Yuhas Consulting Group created models to study how microtargeting can identify landowners agreeable to installing riparian buffers on their land located in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The watershed is home to 18 million people in six states and encompasses cities like Baltimore, Norfolk and Washington, D.C. It is the country’s largest estuary and provides vital habitat for more than 3,600 plant and animal species.
Microtargeting is a marketing technique that uses predictive big data analysis to identify the people most likely to respond positively to particular messages or interventions, and it can aggregate marketing formulas from an individual’s digital footprint.
Read more at the University of Montana
Photo Credit: mcfisher via Pixabay
