Does Economic Growth Exhibit a Systematic Relationship With Wildlife Trade?

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is regarded as a major environmental issue. Economic growth is thought to increase wildlife trade by expanding markets and increasing purchasing power. However, empirical analyses linking macroeconomic change to IWT remain limited. This paper examines whether economic growth is associated with illegal wildlife trade by using a cross-country dataset covering 148 countries from 1990 onwards. Our seizure records are taken from the TRAFFIC database and are used as an estimate of illegal wildlife trade, while economic growth is measured using real GDP growth data from the Quality of Government dataset. The analysis uses a linear regression model with country- and time-fixed effects to control for country-specific dynamics and global trends.
The initial regression, prior to the inclusion of fixed effects, suggests a small positive relationship between economic growth and seizures. However, once country and time fixed effects are included, the relationship disappears and becomes statistically insignificant. These findings suggest that economic growth does not display a consistent relationship to illegal wildlife trade. Instead, wildlife crime appears to be affected by growth in opposing supply- and demand-side economic forces that ultimately do not provide a systematic relationship. Our paper explores, based on our findings, how ideal wildlife protectionist policies should be growth-invariant, meaning that they should remain robust regardless of changes in economic growth.