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The unsustainable trade in wildlife is a key threat to Earth’s biodiversity. Efforts to mitigate this threat have traditionally focused on regulation and enforcement, and there is a growing interest in campaigns to reduce consumer demand for wildlife products. We aimed to characterize these behavior-change campaigns and the evidence of their impacts. We searched peer-reviewed and grey literature repositories and over 200 institutional websites to retrieve information on demand-reduction campaigns. We found 236 campaigns, mainly in the grey literature. Since the 1970s, the number of campaigns increased, although for over 15% a start date could not be found. Asia was the primary focus, although at the national level the United States was where most campaigns took place. Campaigns most often focused on a single species of mammal; other vertebrates groups, with the exception of sharks, received limited attention. Many campaigns focused on broad themes, such as the wildlife trade in general or seafood. Thirty-seven percent of campaigns reported some information on their inputs, 98% on strategies, 70% on outputs, 37% on outcomes (i.e., changes in the target audience), and 9% on impacts (i.e., biological changes or threat reduction). Information on outcomes and impacts was largely anecdotal or based on research designs that are at a high risk of bias, such as preand postcampaign comparisons. It was unclear whether demand-reduction campaigns had direct behavioral or biological impacts. The lack of robust impact evaluation made it difficult to draw insights to inform future efforts, a crucial part of effectively addressing complex issues, such as the wildlife trade. If demandreduction campaigns are to become a cornerstone of the efforts to mitigate the unsustainable trade in wildlife, conservationists need to adopt more rigorous impact evaluation and a more collaborative approach that fosters the sharing of data and insights. El mercado insostenible de fauna es una amenaza importante para la biodiversidad del planeta. Los esfuerzos por mitigar esta amenaza se han enfocado tradicionalmente en la regulación y la ejecución, además de que existe un interés creciente por campañas para reducir la demanda del consumidor por productos de fauna. Buscamos caracterizar estas campañas de cambios de comportamiento y las evidencias de su impacto. Buscamos en los depósitos de literatura gris y aquella revisada por colegas y en más de 200 sitios web institucionales para recuperar información sobre las campañas de reducción de demanda. Encontramos 236 campañas, principalmente en la literatura gris. Desde la década de 1970, el número de campañas incrementó, aunque para más del 15% no pudimos encontrar una fecha de inicio. Asia era el foco principal, aunque a nivel nacional fueron los Estados Unidos en donde se realizaron más campañas. La mayoría de las campañas se enfocaban en una sola especie de mamífero; los demás grupos de vertebrados, excepto los tiburones, recibieron atención limitada. Muchas campañas se enfocaron en temas generales, como el mercado de fauna en general o en la industria de los mariscos. El 37% de las campañas reportaron algo de información sobre sus entradas, el 98% sobre sus estrategias, el 70% sobre su producción, el 37% sobre sus resultados (es decir, cambios en el público diana), y el 9% sobre sus impactos (es decir, cambios biológicos o reducción de la amenaza). La información sobre los resultados y los impactos en su mayoría fue anecdótica o basada en diseños de investigación que tienen un alto riesgo de sesgo, como las comparaciones pre-y post-campaña. No quedóclaro si las campañas de reducción de demanda tuvieron impactos biológicos o de comportamiento directos. La falta de una evaluación fuerte de los impactos dificulta la obtención de conocimiento para informar los esfuerzos en el futuro, una parte crucial para tratar con eficiencia temas complejos, como el mercado de fauna. Si se busca que las campañas de reducción de demanda se conviertan en una piedra angular de los esfuerzos para mitigar el mercado insostenible de fauna, los conservacionistas necesitan adoptar una evaluación más rigurosa de los impactos y una estrategia más colaborativa que promueva la distribución de datos y conocimiento. 非可持续性的野生动植物贸易是地球生物多样性的主要威胁。为减缓这种威胁，传统的策略侧重于监管 和执法方面，而今越来越关注于减少消費者野生动植物产品需求的活动。我们旨在描述这些针对行为改变的活 动及其影响的实证。为检索有关减少需求的活动信息，我们搜索了同行评议文献、灰色文献资料库，及200多 个机构网站.從中我钯共检索到2 36项活动，主要来自于灰色文献。尽管有超过巧％的活动无法找到确切的开 始日期，但自2 0 世纪7 0 年代以来此类活动的数量仍是有所増加的。虽然在国家层面上美国是大多数活动的 举办地，但亚洲是主要的焦点地区。活动通常针对某一哺乳动物; 除鲨鱼外，其他脊椎动物受到的关注有限。很 多活动所侧重的主题比较宽泛，例如总体的野生动植物贸易或海产食物。有37%的活动报告了其投入情况、 98%的介绍了其策略、70%的总结了其产出情况、37%的说明了其躲(例如目标受众的改变) 、以及9%的 报告了其影响（例如生物上的变化或威胁的減少) o 关于效果和影响的信息主要是轶事的或基于具有高度偏差 风险的研究设计，例如栝动前后的比较。目前尚不清楚在行为或生物方面减少需求的活动是否具有直接影响。 由于缺乏强有力的影响评估，难以为未来的措施提供见解，而这正是有效解决诸如野生动植物贸易等复杂同题的 关键部分。如果减少需求的活动要成为减缓野生动植物菲可持续性贸易的基石，保护主义者需要采取更严格的 影响评估和加強协作的方法，来促进数据和见解的共享。

Auctions often involve the sale of many related goods: Treasury, spectrum, and electricity auctions are examples. In multi-unit auctions, bids for marginal units may affect payments for inframarginal units, giving rise to \"demand reduction\" and furthermore to incentives for shading bids differently across units. We establish that such differential bid shading results generically in ex post inefficient allocations in the uniform-price and pay-as-bid auctions. We also show that, in general, the efficiency and revenue rankings of the two formats are ambiguous. However, in settings with symmetric bidders, the pay-as-bid auction often outperforms. In particular, with diminishing marginal utility, symmetric information and linearity, it yields greater expected revenues. We explain the rankings through multi-unit effects, which have no counterparts in auctions with unit demands. We attribute the new incentives separately to multi-unit (but constant) marginal utility and to diminishing marginal utility. We also provide comparisons with the Vickrey auction.

Interventions targeting consumer behavior may help to reduce demand for bushmeat in urban areas. Understanding the drivers of urban bushmeat consumption is crucial to guide such interventions; however the cultural and socio-psychological factors driving consumer behavior remain understudied. Through qualitative interviews with urban bushmeat consumers in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, we investigated perceptions of bushmeat and other animal proteins, and social norms regulating urban demand for bushmeat. The perception of bushmeat as natural, tasty and healthy, and a rare luxury product functioning as a symbol of social status, underpins social norms to provide bushmeat. The main barriers to purchasing were cost and availability. Locally produced fish, meat, and poultry were positively perceived as organic and healthy, whereas frozen imported animal proteins were perceived negatively as transformed, of poor quality and taste, and unhealthy. Our findings provide an initial baseline understanding of social-psychological drivers shaping consumption that can inform the design of bushmeat demand reduction campaigns.

A reduction of energy service demand in all sectors is required to reach ambitious climate and other sustainability goals. A growing number of energy and climate scenarios does include detailed assumptions and quantified parameters for the reduction of energy service demand. However, the indicators and units used to measure the demand reduction potential of energy services differ from study to study and are thus difficult to compare. To help fill the existing research gap around the assumptions and quantification of sufficiency potentials, we analyse quantified European-focused sufficiency scenarios that are ambitious with respect to energy demand reduction. We propose twelve main service level indicators for comparison and create a database for the industry, transport, building and food sectors which includes values for these indicators from all identified scenarios. Achieving a common understanding of such indicators in the research community and more transparency in published scenario assumptions, input and output parameters, would improve comparability and streamline data research efforts. The resulting final energy demand in European sufficiency scenarios varies between 37 and 65 GJ/capita/year, which corresponds to reductions of −55 percent and −26 percent, respectively, by the target year (2040/2045/2050), averaging −46 percent. In European sufficiency scenarios, values for energy service demand in all sectors differ significantly, except for average distance travelled per person. The highest assumed reduction can be found for food indicators with an average 60 percent reduction compared to historic values. A comparison with published values for decent living standards shows that assumed values in European sufficiency scenarios are significantly higher. The analysed European sufficiency scenarios in this paper provide a different perspective on future values for energy service demand indicators than decent living standard approaches. The combination of those perspectives can inform discussions on a sustainable consumption space that climate policy is aiming for.

Many electricity providers are offering their customers an array of tariff options intended to discourage electricity consumption at specific times of the day. The problem facing a customer is whether to switch from their existing tariff to a new tariff. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to develop two analytical methods that help residential customers evaluate when switching from a flat-rate tariff to time-varying pricing options, specifically the Time-of-Use (TOU) tariff and an event-based tariff, becomes economically beneficial, and second, to review customers’ experiences with the tariffs. The methods identify the specific consumption distributions at which the TOU or event-based tariffs are in energy- and cost-equilibrium with the domestic service tariff for residential customers. For the TOU structure, the analysis shows that customers must maintain a non-winter-to-winter-peak consumption ratio exceeding 3.0756 for cost neutrality, a condition rarely met by households with winter-dominant loads. In contrast, event-based structures require only minimal behavioral adjustments to achieve savings, with as little as 1.75% of annual consumption needing to be avoided during event periods to match domestic-service costs. Additional savings are observed with partial or full load shifting away from peak events. The findings highlight that while TOU may benefit households with high summer usage, event-based tariffs present a more practical and economically favorable option for residential customers living in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. The paper concludes with implications for tariff selection and consumer behavior. This research will be of value to anyone considering designing a time-varying rate or having to choose between an existing flat-rate tariff and a time-varying tariff.

Arising from a discussion meeting in September 2016, this editorial introduces a special issue on the transition to a future industrial system with greatly reduced demand for material production and attempts to synthesize the main findings. The motivation for such a transition is to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions, but unlike previous industrial transformations, there are no major stakeholders who will pursue the change for their own immediate benefit. The special issue, therefore, explores the means by which such a transition could be brought about. The editorial presents an overview of the opportunities identified in the papers of the volume, presents examples of actions that can be taken today to begin the process of change and concludes with an agenda for research that might support a rapid acceleration in the rate of change. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Material demand reduction’.

Background This study examines the relationship between the export of raw tobacco and the national implementation of measures aimed at reducing tobacco demand. Methods This was a cross-sectional study utilizing multinomial regression analysis. Using WHO Global Tobacco Epidemic data, FCTC Global Progress Report data and International Trade Data from 2020 for 181 countries, this research investigates the association between the export of raw tobacco as a percentage of GDP and both tobacco tax rates, as well as the implementation of tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship (TAPS) bans. Results The results show that countries with higher dependence on tobacco leaf exports had a substantially and consistently lower level of TAPS ban implementation, with a large negative association that remained robust across model specifications. However, tobacco leaf exports showed no significant association with tax rates. Furthermore, countries with weaker governance structures tended to have lower tax rates. Conclusions These findings underscore the crucial role of enforcing Article 5.3 of the FCTC to protect TAPS policies from tobacco industry interference, particularly in countries with strong tobacco farming and export dependence, where implementation of such policies appears to be weaker. Additionally, the study emphasizes the importance of capacity-building efforts in regions with weaker governance structures to promote effective tobacco tax policies.

Donors, NGOs, and governments increasingly invest in campaigns to reduce consumer demand for wildlife products in an attempt to prevent the decline of overexploited and poached species. We provide a novel framework to aid these investment decisions based on a demand reduction campaign's return on investment compared to antipoaching law enforcement. A resulting decision rule shows that the relative effectiveness of demand reduction compared to increased enforcement depends entirely on social and economic uncertainties rather than ecological ones. Illustrative case studies on bushmeat and ivory reveal that campaigning to reduce demand may be more cost‐effective than antipoaching enforcement if demand reduction campaigns drive modest price reductions. The outputs from this framework can link targeted monitoring of wildlife product prices to management decisions that protect species threatened by harvest and trade.

Under the present electricity tariff structure in Malaysia, electricity billing on a monthly basis for commercial and industrial consumers includes the net consumption charges together with maximum demand (MD) charges. The use of batteries in combination with photovoltaic (PV) systems is projected to become a viable solution for energy management, in terms of peak load shaving. Based on the latest studies, maximum demand (MD) reduction can be accomplished via a solar PV-battery system based on a few measures such as load pattern, techno-economic traits, and electricity scheme. Based on these measures, the Maximum Demand Reduction (MDRed) Model is developed as an optimization tool for the solar PV-battery system. This paper shows that energy savings on net consumption and maximum demand can be maximized via optimal sizing of the solar PV-battery system using the MATLAB genetic algorithm (GA) tool. GA optimization results revealed that the optimal sizing of solar PV-battery system gives monthly energy savings of up to 20% of net consumption via solar PV self-consumption, 3% of maximum demand (MD) via MD shaving and 2% of surplus power supplied to grid via net energy metering (NEM) in regards to Malaysian electricity tariff scheme and cost of the overall system.

Connected communities potentially offer much greater demand response capabilities over singular building energy management systems (BEMS) through an increase of connectivity. The potential increase in benefits from this next step in connectivity is still under investigation, especially when applied to existing buildings. This work utilizes EnergyPlus simulation results on eight different commercial prototype buildings to estimate the potential savings on peak demand and energy costs using a mixed-integer linear programming model. This model is used in two cases: a fully connected community and eight separate buildings with BEMS. The connected community is optimized using all zones as variables, while the individual buildings are optimized separately and then aggregated. These optimization problems are run for a range of individual zone flexibility values. The results indicate that a connected community offered 60.0% and 24.8% more peak demand savings for low and high flexibility scenarios, relative to individually optimized buildings. Energy cost optimization results show only marginally better savings of 2.9% and 6.1% for low and high flexibility, respectively.