Tick-box exercise: choice architecture of online classified pet advertisement websites can improve reporting of compliance with legal requirements

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has been the global standard for monitoring international trade in wildlife for the past half-century, but compliance is imperfect, in part because of misunderstandings regarding the details of in-country regulations. One such regulation is the need to report details of an Article 10 certificate (A10) for the sale of certain species, with the aim of regulating domestic trade within the EU and UK. For two commonly traded species requiring A10 certificates, we collected data from two UK websites on the frequency of reporting the correct paperwork. One website contains a free text field and a tick box to capture information on A10 certificates, whereas the other solely contains a free text field. For each species, the tick box captured A10 certificate ownership in 99% of advertisements—significantly higher than the free text field on that website. In 92% of advertisements, the tick box encouraged reporting of the unique A10 number. The presence of a tick box also encouraged higher reporting of A10 ownership in the free text field, which probably reflects improved disclosure rather than the legality of advertisements. These results suggest that the choice architecture of websites can have a significant impact on the disclosure of the correct information.