The LIFE Recreation ReMEDIES: ‘Reducing and Mitigating Erosion and Disturbance Impacts affecting the Seabed’ project (LIFE 18 NAT/UK/000039) ran from July 2019 to October 2024 with the aim to improve the condition of seagrass beds and maerl in five Special Areas of Conservation (SACs).
One component of the project was to help reduce recreational pressures by encouraging recreational boaters to change their behaviour. Natural England commissioned an evaluation to try to understand the extent to which the ReMEDIES project led to behaviour change (NECR611Evaluation of behaviour changes from Natural England’s ReMEDIES project).
Building on the feedback from that evaluation, this information note provides reflections from the NE staff involved in managing the behaviour change evaluation on lessons learned from the process of designing and implementing ReMEDIES, that if done differently might have helped provide a more certain assessment of behavioural outcomes.
What has become clear through the ReMEDIES project is how challenging it can be to assess the impacts of interventions on behaviour in real world settings where experimental designs may not be feasible.
The aim of this information note is to help inform other similar projects, by providing a detailed summary of the lessons learnt in designing, implementing and evaluating pro-environmental behaviour change interventions in real world settings, such as recreational boating communities.