Human behavior is a driving factor of global conservation challenges, including biodiversity loss, pollution, resource consumption, and climate change. Conservation social scientists are increasingly using behavior change interventions, “coordinated sets of activities designed to change specified behavior patterns”, to address these conservation challenges. The amphibian pet trade community has partially facilitated the spread of highly virulent amphibian diseases and subsequent species declines and extinctions. Amphibian businesses and owners can lack biosecurity behaviors, leading to disease spillover events into wild ecosystems. We begin researching these biosecurity behaviors, including wearing gloves and disinfecting equipment, and behavior influences, including knowledge and social norms, of these community members to inform behavior change intervention development. Our goal is to provide a knowledge base of community behaviors and contexts to create a behavior intervention that is relevant, applicable, and effective at increasing biosecurity practices and reducing the risk of disease spread. We first used an intercept survey method at exotic pet trade shows in four Midwest states (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) to investigate knowledge transfer, social interaction, and community characteristics of exotic pet trade show attendees. We found that attendees learn new information and create and maintain social connections at these shows, both of which are potential behavioral influences. Additionally, we identified sub-populations of attendees to possibly tailor efforts towards. We also conducted a national online survey with amphibian pet trade businesses to investigate characteristics of a business itself, how said businesses interact with others, and how these relate to the number of biosecurity practices performed. We found that importers perform fewer biosecurity actions, the source of amphibians can impact biosecurity practices, and that social image and pressures can increase biosecurity practices. The findings from these two analyses provide fundamental context to build a community-relevant, and potentially community-engaged, behavioral intervention. We found support for and recommend that researchers collaborate with specific community members for a social norms intervention to increase biosecurity behaviors and reduce amphibian disease spread.
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