Public Preference For Management Of Wild Boar In Five Chinese Cities Based On Choice Experiment

In recent years,conflicts between wild boars and human have become increasingly prominent,resulting in massive crop losses and even human casualties in some areas of China.To effectively implement wild boar management policies,it is vital to gain stakeholders’ understanding and support.Based on the domestic and foreign research,as well as our team’s preliminary studies,it is found that on the one hand,residents of local areas where wild boars are present usually prefer the method of hunting and trapping to quickly regulate wild boar populations because of the long-term aggression or threat to their crops and personal safety;on the other hand,with the development of self-media,some groups of urban residents have in recent years become opinion leaders and those who even dominant public opinion on wildlife conservation management.Research and practice at home and abroad have shown that public opinion greatly influences the implementation and effectiveness of wildlife conservation management policies.Therefore,there is an urgent need to study urban public preference for wild boar conservation and management measures in China to explore the underlying causes,and thus find ways to solve the problem of conflicts between wild boars and human.In this study,a semi-structured questionnaire and a choice experiment were conducted to investigate the urban public attitudes towards conflicts between wild boars and human,and their preferences for wild boar management in China and the factors that influenced them.The semi-structured questionnaire was designed based on the "reference point" framework of the "prospect theory" of economics.After the review and analysis of a large number of references and field research,the "attributes" and "levels" of the choice experiment were selected for this study,followed by a pre-test and refinement with samples of Beijing residents collected from July to September 2020.From September 2021 to January 2022,this study selected five typical cities,including Beijing,to examine public attitudes towards conflicts between wild boars and human and their preferences for countermeasures,based on questions such as “whether they are pilot provinces for wild boar regulation” and “whether they have conducted wild boar hunting or compensation for wild boar damage”.In this study,a total of 4,206 semi-structured questionnaires were distributed,and 1,297 questionnaires were returned with 1,229 valid ones;meanwhile,a total of 33,648 choice experiment cards were distributed and 12,376 cards were returned with 9,832 valid ones.The Likert scale method was used to assign values to the options of the semi-structured questionnaire;the data were statistically analysed using the one-way variance method and Pearson correlation coefficient method;the data of the choice experiment were statistically analysed using the multiple logistic regression method and the potential category analysis method.The findings of the study were as follows.1)82.10% of respondents agreed that hunting and trapping should be used to regulate wild boar populations,but 57.70 % of them considered this method to be cruel and inhumane.2)60.70% of the respondents supported the use of “environmental protection tax” to raise compensation funds to mitigate conflicts between wild boars and human;77.77% of the respondents supported the use of "city zoo ticket concessions" to raise compensation funds,while 72% of them supported the use of "wildlife management lottery" to raise compensation funds.3)Multiple logistic regression models indicated that the urban public as a whole showed highly significant preferences for the attributes “wanting the wild boar population to decline”(p < 0.001),“hunting”(p < 0.001),“public funding”(p < 0.001)and “government subsidies”(p< 0.001).Meanwhile,the potential category analysis model indicated heterogeneity in preferences for wild boar management measures among some subgroups in different cities.4)The “reference point” of wild boar damage influences the urban public preference for wild boar management measures.In the absence of any wild boar damage,17.41% of the respondents supported hunting and trapping to regulate wild boar populations;in the case of wild boar damaging the ecological environment,threatening the community economy(excluding the respondents themselves),harming the safety of community residents(excluding the respondents themselves),and causing losses to the respondents’ own families,the proportion of respondents who supported hunting and trapping to regulate wild boar populations were 28.64%,19.93%,34.91% and 41.82% respectively.Based on the above results,the following conclusions are drawn:1)The willingness of the urban public to participate in the compensation for wild boar damage is high,and the voluntary participation of compensation is more favored by the public;the overwhelming majority of the respondents support the regulation of wild boar populations by hunting and trapping,but more than half of the respondents still have certain negative attitudes towards this method;2)The urban public preference for wild boar management measures is affected by whether it is related to self-interest to a certain extent.