Prioritizing cat‐owner behaviors for a campaign to reduce wildlife depredation

Abstract

Behavior prioritization is underutilized but critical to the success of conservation campaigns. It provides an understanding of the target audience's values, transcending conflict, and informing the design of achievable and effective advocacy campaigns. Depredation by domestic cats may depress wildlife populations, leading to conflict between cat owners and conservationists. We surveyed veterinarians and cat owners at veterinary clinics to prioritize a list of nine cat‐management behaviors. Cat‐owner behaviors were ranked by their (a) likelihood of implementation and (b) current adoption rate by cat owners, (c) perceived effectiveness at reducing predation on wildlife, and (d) veterinarians' opinions about their impact on cat welfare. Bringing cats in at night, from before dusk until after dawn, was revealed to be the behavior most suited to a campaign to reduce cats' hunting. Behaviors ranked as more effective for conservation (e.g., 24‐hr cat confinement) were unlikely to be adopted by cat owners or not supported by veterinarians, whose expert and normative support may be critical to a campaign. Although more conservation‐effective behaviors received a lower priority, we discuss the repeated use of behavior prioritization to achieve incremental reductions in cat depredation by engaging with cat owners.

Our Wild Companions: Domestic cats in the Anthropocene

“…Given that cat populations and behaviour are influenced, directly and indirectly, by human behaviour, integrating cat owners as research participants will be vital to improving our understanding of human-cat-environment relations, and to the development and application of effective, sustainable solutions to the environmental challenges created by the global abundance of people and their cats. Recent research has provided important insights into drivers of cat owner behaviour [28,[30][31][32] and the effectiveness of different techniques for communication and behaviour change [33][34][35]. However, beyond behaviour change initiatives, good-faith engagement between cat owners and advocates, wildlife conservationists, and scientists will be vital to understanding differing perspectives, concerns, and priorities, and to constructively deliberating on human responsibilities to and for domestic cats.…”

Uncontrolled Outdoor Access for Cats: An Assessment of Risks and Benefits

“…However, other research indicates that many owners are less willing to confine their cats to protect wildlife (e.g., [77][78][79]). A survey from New Zealand, targeted to veterinarians and cat owners to prioritize cat management behaviors, revealed that bringing cats in at night was likely to be adopted by cat owners, but confining cats inside 24-h per day was not supported by veterinarians and was unlikely to be adopted by cat owners [80]. Clancy and colleagues [15] surveyed 184 cat owners in Massachusetts in the United States on which factors influence owner provision of outdoor access for cats.…”

Identifying and prioritizing human behaviors that benefit biodiversity

“…Prioritizing behaviors begins by identifying and defining those behaviors likely to have the greatest positive or negative impact on biodiversity (Clayton, Litchfield, & Geller, 2013;Schultz, 2011), a process determined in part by the objectives or scale of the behavior change program. For instance, previous conservation research has prioritized the most impactful cat-owner behaviors (e.g., cat containment and cat collaring) in New Zealand (Linklater et al, 2019), and individual behaviors to reduce the impact of wild dogs (e.g., trapping wild dogs and abstain from feeding wild dogs) in peri-urban communities of Australia (Please et al, 2018). These studies selected a subset of behaviors that addressed a specific conservation problem (e.g., cat predation of native animals) among a specific audience (e.g., cat owners in New Zealand).…”

“…They are therefore harder to measure and contain a higher degree of uncertainty (Butchart et al, 2010;Scholes & Biggs, 2005). To overcome the problem of a lack of a standard unit of measurement, Please et al (2018) and Linklater et al (2019) used expert estimates (measured by numerical scales) to determine the effectiveness of changing specific behaviors on targeted outcomes that benefit biodiversity.…”

“…Plasticity has also been measured by surveys of target communities. To generate plasticity scores, Kneebone et al (2017) used a Likert-scale instrument to estimate the perceived ease of behavior adoption by the target audience, while Please et al (2018) and Linklater et al (2019) surveyed their respective populations for willingness to participate in a behavior.…”