Diogo Veríssimo
I was born in Lisbon, Portugal, to a family with deep roots in farming and the Portuguese countryside.
I decided early on that keeping biodiversity around was probably a good idea and this passion for nature makes my work simultaneously my favourite hobby. I am also a great lover of salted cod, cheese and football, although usually not at the same time.
I am conservation biologist turned conservation marketer. As I grew as a conservationist I realised that human behaviour is the key driver of all conservation threats and so decided to work towards behaviour change for biodiversity conservation. I see marketing theory and principles as one particularly exciting way of achieving that goal, as it combines applied knowledge gathered by practitioners to the academic work done in disciplines such as psychology, sociology or anthropology.
My work focuses on the design and evaluation of behaviour change interventions targeting the consumers of wildlife products being illegally traded.
This is part of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade.
Diogo Veríssimo, Annalisa Bianchessi, Alejandro Arrivillaga, Fel Ceasar Cadiz, Roquelito Mancao, Kevin Green. Does It Work for Biodiversity? Experiences and Challenges in the Evaluation of Social Marketing Campaigns Social Marketing Quarterly
Greenfield S.J. & Veríssimo D. (2019) To what extent is social marketing used in demand reduction campaigns for illegal wildlife products? Social Marketing Quarterly, Vol 25 (1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1524500418813543
Salazar, G., Mills, M., & Veríssimo, D. (2018) Qualitative Impact Evaluation of a Social Marketing Campaign for Conservation. Conservation Biology. doi:10.1111/cobi.13218
Veríssimo, D. (2019) The Past, Present, and Future of Using Social Marketing to Conserve Biodiversity. Social Marketing Quarterly, Vol 25(1):3-8.
Veríssimo, D. and Wan, A. K. (2019) Characterizing efforts to reduce consumer demand for wildlife products. Conservation Biology, Vol 33(3): 623-633. doi:10.1111/cobi.13227
Veríssimo, D., Schmid, C., Kimario, F. F. & Eves, H. E. (2018), Measuring the impact of an entertainment-education intervention to reduce demand for bushmeat. Anim Conserv. doi:10.1111/acv.12396
