Factors influencing local people's attitudes towards wild boar in Taohongling National Nature Reserve of Jiangxi Province, China

Abstract

Conflicts between human and wildlife, especially the wild boar (Sus scrofa), have been reported from all over the world in recent years, and contradiction between wildlife conservation and local people's interests are more and more serious. The attitudes of local people to wildlife are thus an increasing important element of conservation work. Attitudinal studies have increasingly been adopted as a tool for evaluating public understanding, acceptance and impact of conservation interventions. However, attitudes may vary within a community and be influenced by many factors. In this study, data were collected from November 2009 to January 2010 by questionnaire and informal interviews with local people in Taohongling National Nature Reserve of Jiangxi province to assess how their attitudes towards wild boar were shaped by a series of socio-demographic and physical factors. The results showed that 92.8% of the interviewees considered wild boar had no value while 7.2% chose having value; 29.7% chose “extirpate”, 70.3% chose “control” and nobody chose “protect” when asked about how they would expect the wild boar population changes; 86.6% chose “no” and 13.4% chose “yes” when inquired about whether they would kill wild boars when their interests were threatened by wild boars. In a binary logistic regression analysis, gender, residence status, types of fuel sources, frequency of encountering wild boar, area of farmland converted from rice-planting to cotton-planting, level of awareness of wildlife protection and level of wild boar damage to local people's interests were important in shaping people's attitudes. The paper discusses the implications of these results and puts forwards suggestion for alleviating human-wild boar conflicts.