Communities are routinely compelled to change through new laws. Some laws – like those promoting biodiversity conservation – are often resisted, but community-level processes involved in resistance are not always explicitly examined. Moreover, integration of new laws into community routines often takes (a long) time, yet few people-place studies consider that change happens in stages. We adopt the Trans-Theoretical Model(TTM) to examine stages of behavioral change in legally-framed conservation behaviours. A survey to a representative sample of residents in Natura2000 sites inspected predictors like social norms to extend the TTM to community-level processes. We tested the assumption that as individuals become aware of distinct positions in the community, norm misalignment can be linked to more ambivalence, reinforcing its role in delaying action. The results provide evidence of the stages where the normative conflicts – between social norms, and between those and the law/formal norm – are stronger, and compare levels of ambivalence of residents perceiving high vs. low conflicting norms. We also tested if this pattern is accentuated for residents with stronger place attachment. The discussion focus on the interplay between new laws, social norms and place bonds for advancing environmental conservation and how a stage perspective contributes to improve the design and implementation of conservation laws at local sites.

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stage models; social norms; ambivalence