Does Economic Growth Exhibit a Systematic Relationship With Wildlife Trade? | RISE Research

This study investigates whether economic growth is systematically associated with illegal wildlife trade (IWT), using a cross-country panel of 148 countries from 1990 onward. Wildlife seizure records from the TRAFFIC database serve as a proxy for IWT, while real GDP growth data come from the Quality of Government dataset. The author runs a log-linear regression of seizures on GDP growth, first without controls and then with country- and time-fixed effects to account for each country's stable characteristics (geography, wildlife prevalence, institutions) and for global shocks affecting all countries simultaneously (such as international regulation changes or the COVID-19 pandemic). Without fixed effects, the pooled regression shows a small, statistically significant positive relationship between GDP growth and seizures (p = .04), suggesting a 1% rise in growth corresponds to roughly a 1.4% increase in seizures. However, once country and time fixed effects are added, this relationship disappears entirely and becomes statistically insignificant (coefficient = -0.003, p = .64). The paper argues this null result reflects two offsetting forces: economic growth increases demand for wildlife products among wealthier consumers while simultaneously reducing poverty-driven poaching incentives, and these effects roughly cancel out. The author also stresses that seizure counts are an imperfect proxy, shaped as much by enforcement capacity and reporting quality as by the true scale of illegal trade. The study concludes that wildlife protection policy should not be tied to assumptions about economic growth, but should instead be designed to remain robust and consistently enforced regardless of a country's growth trajectory, with attention paid to governance, enforcement capacity, and demand-reduction measures.