Income and wildlife hunting in the Anthropocene : Evidence from Cambodia

Wildlife hunting is one of the largest causes of biodiversity loss, yet its drivers are still poorly understood. This paper quantifies the relationship between income and wildlife hunting in Cambodia, a country at the forefront of the clash between economic development and biodiversity loss. We use two nationally representative datasets which, unusually, collect detailed data on both the consumption and sales of hunted wildlife to estimate the importance of income on wildlife hunting in rural areas. Using rainfall shocks in the beginning of the main agricultural production season and prices of other protein sources as sources of exogenous variation in household income, we show that income has a causal negative relationship with wildlife hunting in rural Cambodia. We use these estimates to explore the effectiveness of cash transfers as a policy that promotes both wildlife conservation and poverty alleviation by primarily reducing the value of hunted wildlife as a coping strategy.