Van der Merwe, AntoinetteRuppen, DesireeBrugger, FritzKonkobo, Hermann MoussaGunther, Isabel2025-06-192025-06-192025-09Van der Merwe, A., Ruppen, D., Brugger, F. et al. 2025, 'Protective behaviour on artisanal gold mines: the relevance of knowledge, risk perception and access to equipment', Extractive Industries and Society, vol. 23, art. 101693, pp. 1-12, doi : 10.1016/j.exis.2025.101693.2214-790X (print)2214-7918 (online)10.1016/j.exis.2025.101693http://hdl.handle.net/2263/102885DATA AVAILABILTY : Once the paper has been finalised for publication, all anonymised data necessary to replicate the study will be publicly available from the ETH Research Collection data repository (https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/).Many artisanal miners use mercury, a toxic metal, to extract gold from ore, without protecting themselves. In this study, we analyse the role of knowledge, risk perception, and improved access to protective equipment on artisanal miners’ protective behaviour. We combine survey results with a field experiment involving about 250 miners. While more than half of the miners perceive mercury as dangerous to their health, their knowledge about mercury is low despite ongoing educational programmes on the mines. Few had heard about mercury poisoning, could mention any of the critical symptoms of mercury contamination, or knew how to properly protect themselves from mercury. Risk perception was not significantly correlated to knowledge of mercury, previous training or protective behaviour. However, improving access to protective equipment by providing it for free had a large positive impact on protective behaviour one year later. Our results suggest that international policy efforts to address the mercury problem through the Minamata Convention should include access to personal protective equipment as a priority. This will have significant health benefits for miners in the short term while countries work to transition to mercury-free mining in the long term.en© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Artisanal gold miningMercuryProtective behaviourField experimentBurkina fasoRetortsArticle