Tick-box exercise: Choice architecture of online classified advertisement websites can improve reporting of CITES Certificate ownership

The ethical and sustainable trade of nature and natural products relies on the presence of and compliance with legislation. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has been the global standard for the past half century, but doubts exist about compliance with CITES because of the lucrative nature of illegal trade, and because of misunderstandings regarding the details of specific in-country regulations. For two commonly traded species requiring UK CITES Article 10 (A10) Certificates we collected data on the frequency of reporting of the correct paperwork. We did so on two UK websites that vary in their format: one contains both a free text field and a tick box to capture information on CITES Certificates, the other contains solely a free text field. For each species the tick box captured A10 Certificate ownership in 99% of advertisements, which was significantly higher than that reported in the free text field of the same website. Further, the presence of a tick box also encouraged higher reporting of A10 ownership in the free text field, with a significant difference between websites. These results suggest that the choice architecture of websites can have a significant impact on how effectively advertisers report ownership of the correct Certificates and information.