When coping means breaking the rules: Understanding conservation crime through strain

Conservation crime, including outlawed hunting, logging, and natural resource use, poses a direct threat to biodiversity worldwide. Reducing this harmful behavior and understanding the motivations of offenders is crucial, yet drivers remain underexamined. This study applies General Strain Theory to explore how social and environmental strains shape coping strategies, including conservation crime, among communities in and around Pù Mát National Park, Vietnam, a hotspot for conservation crime. We conducted three phases of qualitative fieldwork in 2023 and 2024 across 16 communities, using semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and member-checking workshops with 218 participants. We identified nine distinct strains, ranging from unmet basic needs and economic hardship to land accessibility, environmental stressors, and insufficient medical care. Four of them are novel, ecologically embedded forms, such as road and remoteness strain or environmental stressors. Participants described four main coping strategies: conservation crime, outmigration, reliance on aid, and lifestyle adaptation. While participants did not always explicitly connect specific strains to illegal behavior, basic needs, economic, land, and road and remoteness strains emerged as particularly salient and were most frequently discussed in relation to conservation crime. These findings suggest that broader structural inequalities—such as poverty, limited access to services, and spatial marginalization—may influence vulnerability to illegal resource use and merit attention as potentially criminogenic stressors. By applying General Strain Theory to conservation and extending it with ecologically grounded and spatially situated drivers of strain, this study offers a new lens for identifying, anticipating, and potentially addressing risks of conservation crime in protected areas. • First qualitative, in-depth application of GST to conservation crime • Empirical GST case study of conservation crime in Pù Mát National Park, Vietnam • Fieldwork identified nine strains, including four novel ecological ones. • Results provide fine-grained insight into poverty- and place-based strains. • Links coping strategy access to strain severity and local inequalities