The Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre (IA CRC) has developed an impressive set of technologies and recommended best practices for managing and controlling invasive pests. But these proposed solutions will fail unless the public is sufficiently motivated and empowered to change behaviours and adopt new approaches. Changing behaviour, and sustaining these changes over time, is a difficult process. Educating the public about the negative impacts of invasive animals and providing information about control strategies is rarely enough.

Invasive species wreak an estimated $1.4 trillion in damages globally, each year. To have any hope of reducing this damage, best-practice control strategies must incorporate behavior change interventions. Traditional interventions, based on the 'knowledge-transfer' model, assume that if land managers are properly educated about risks and strategies, they will develop supportive attitudes and implement appropriate control strategies. However, the social sciences have produced a large number of behavioral models and frameworks that demonstrate that knowledge transfer, by itself, fails to change behavior. The challenge then lies in knowing which behavioral model to choose, and when, from a potentially overwhelming 'universe'. In this paper, we review nine behavior theories relevant to invasive species management. We then introduce the 'Behavior Change Wheel' as a tool for integrating these theories into a single practical framework. This framework links drivers of and barriers to behavior change with intervention strategies and policies, in what we consider, from an applied perspective, to be an important advance.