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612 C. Sampson et al.


participant they saw upon arrival at the location. Once the interview was completed, the interviewer allowed three peo- ple to pass before approaching the next potential participant. For the urban sample, we used the convenience sampling


approach to recruit participants in Yangon in five public locations: Mingalar market, People’s Park, Sule Pagoda, Kandawgyi Park and Sule Park. We also conducted inter- views in two nature-themed urban locations, Yangon Zoo and Hlawga National Park. We found no difference in re- sponses between public and nature-themed locations for all but one question (Supplementary Material 2), and therefore combined responses into a single dataset for urban areas.


Data analysis


We determined data distribution to be non-normal, using the Shapiro–Wilk test (Shapiro &Wilk, 1965).We used the non- parametric unpaired two-sample Wilcoxon rank-sum test (Hollander et al., 1973) to test for significant (α = 0.05)differ- ences of the Likert scale responses between participants from urban and rural locations.We used χ2 tests to test for signifi- cance (α = 0.05) for all other question types.We determined effect size using Cohen’s d (Cohen, 1988). Statistical analyses were conducted in R 3.5.1 (R Core Team, 2013).


Results


We conducted a total of 178 interviews, 83 in rural and 95 in urban locations. The mean age was was 41 ± SE 1.5 and 28 ± SE 1 years old for rural and urban participants, respec- tively. Rural interviewees were primarily men (67 men, 15 women), whereas the numbers of men and women in the urban sample were nearly equal (46 and 44, respectively). Gender was not reported for one rural participant and five urban participants. The majority of the participants self- identified as Burmese in both rural (71%) and urban (69%) locations, and the remaining participants as Rakhine, Mon, Kayin, Chin or other. Most participants were Buddhist (92% rural and 88% urban, respectively), with the remainder following Christian, Hindu,Muslim or other religions.


Attitudes towards elephants


Overall, both rural and urban participants had positive atti- tudes towards elephants. Both groups displayed a similar level of belief that elephants should be protected because of the benefits they provide to people (Supplementary Material 3). Enjoyment from seeing elephants was the bene- fit most reported by rural participants (81%, n = 78), fol- lowed by job creation in the tourism and conservation industries. Urban participants reported that income from tourists coming to Myanmar to see elephants was the most common benefit they received (77%, n = 74), followed by the labour elephants provide (73%, n = 70).


FIG. 2 Attitudes of rural and urban participants in Myanmar towards elephants on a 5-point Likert scale (December 2016– May 2018). Asterisks denote significant differences between urban and rural respondents: ** P,0.01, *** P,0.001.


Rural participants were significantly more likely to


agree that elephants were an important part of religion in Myanmar (P,0.01; Fig. 2), but less likely to believe it is possible to coexist with them (P,0.001; Fig. 2). Rural par- ticipants were also less likely to believe it is possible to share the same land with elephants (P,0.001; Fig. 2)orthatitis acceptable for elephants to be used in the tourism (P,0.01; Fig. 3) and timber industries (P,0.001; Fig. 3). Rural re- spondents were more likely to prioritize the needs of hu- mans over the needs of the wild elephant population than urban participants (P,0.001; Fig. 3).


Knowledge about elephants and conservation


Wefound no significant difference between rural and urban participants in knowledge about the conservation status of Asian elephants in Myanmar. Themajority of both rural (97%; n = 79) and urban (89%; n = 73) participants correctly identified that elephants were an Endangered species that was legally protected, and that out of all countries with Asian elephants Myanmar had the largest extent of remain- ing elephanthabitat (rural = 90%,n = 58; urban = 81%,n = 64; SupplementaryMaterial 4). When asked about their percep- tions of changes to the status ofMyanmar’selephantpopula- tionover thepast 5years,58%(n = 83)of ruraland38%(n = 95) of urban participants believed the elephant population had decreased. Both groups pointed to poaching as the greatest threat to wild elephants (rural = 67%, n = 79; urban = 57%, n=81; Supplementary Material 5), followed by habitat degra- dation (rural = 24%, n = 79; urban = 37%, n = 81).


Oryx, 2022, 56(4), 609–616 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321000156


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