Integrating social science into conservation practice: Evidence from environmental non‐governmental organization publications and practitioner perspectives

Social science is critical to conservation success, yet has not become mainstream. To better understand its current state and drivers and barriers to its application, we analyzed 700 peer‐reviewed articles with co‐authors from the 4 largest (“dominant”) international environmental non‐governmental organizations (ENGOs) 1998–2023 and interviewed pairs of scientists and conservation managers at 4 geographically dispersed projects at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Co‐authored conservation social science papers have increased from 1.7% to 10.6% of the annual scientific publications emerging from dominant ENGOs. By social science discipline, total papers include 29.4% Political Science, 23.9% Economics, 19.8% Sociology, 11.5% Human Geography, 8.3% Anthropology, 4.7% Psychology, and 2.5% Demography. Most were global/regional/national and only 13% local‐scale, with the percentage of global‐scale increasing and local‐scale decreasing over time. Of papers that identified a specific location, more than half were in the United States and Canada, a trend that remained stable over time. Interviews highlight that successful integration of social science into conservation was enabled by project contexts that emphasized human dimensions, supportive leadership, funder requirements, and organizational commitments to equity. However, implementation was constrained by resource and capacity limitations, methodological and communication challenges, cultural dynamics, and organizational barriers that limited the early and sustained incorporation of social science into conservation planning and practice. Our results indicate that achieving durable and equitable conservation outcomes will depend on overcoming persistent institutional barriers and embedding social science as a core pillar of conservation science and practice.