868 I. Best and K. J.-C. Pei
TABLE 1 Key for assigning interviewees to groups based on their attitudes to leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis protection and their knowledge of leopard cats and their ecology.
Questions
Leopard cat protection (1) Do you think protecting leopard cats is more important than development projects in the region?
(2) Would you be willing to help protect leopard cats? (3) If there were leopard cats living on your land would you tolerate/protect them?
Knowledge of leopard cats and their ecology (1) What is suitable habitat for leopard cats?
(2) How many leopard cats can be found in Miaoli? (3) What does a leopard cat diet consist of? (4) How much land does one leopard cat need?
All questions answered correctly = High group 2–3 questions answered correctly = Medium group 0–1 questions answered correctly = Low group
Responses
‘Yes’ to all three questions = Supportive group All other combinations = Neutral/Unsupportive group
TABLE 2 Summary statistics of χ2 tests to determine associations between the dependent variables ‘support for leopard cat protection’ and ‘knowledge’.
Variable Age
Gender
Education level Occupation Experience3
Experience type4 Conservation experience5
Support for leopard cat protection n1
141 150 149 150 149 56
149
df 1
1 4 8 1 1 1
3.32
15.11 24.12 1.90 5.75 6.26
Knowledge
χ2 Pn1 8.24
0.004*** 0.081
0.004*** 0.002*** 0.168 0.016
0.012* df
141 150 149 150 149 56
149
1Varies because not all respondents answered all questions. 2χ2 statistic calculated with Fisher’s exact test (used when the subgroup sample of a variable was ,5). 3Previous experiences with leopard cats: yes or no. 4Type of experience with leopard cats: neutral or negative. 5Previous experiences with conservation activities: yes or no. *P,0.05, ***P,0.005.
of participants in this group and acquire a more realistic estimation of supportive individuals in our sample. We also defined conditions for groups reflecting their level of knowledge (high, medium or low) of leopard cat ecology and current conservation status (Table 1). Participants were also categorized according to whether
or not they had encountered leopard cats, and whether their encounters had been negative or neutral. For example, depredation of an interviewee’s poultry by a leopard cat would qualify as a negative experience. Additionally, we determined if participants had any previous experiences with conservation organizations, groups and/or activities (de- noted the conservation experience variable). Our explanatory variables were derived from the socio-demographic and ex- perience factors, and our dependent variables were leopard cat protection, and knowledge. We used SPSS v. 22.0 (IBM, Armonk, USA) for statistical
analyses. Descriptive statistical tests were used to compute cross-tabulations, and χ2 tests to determine association and significance between the two dependent variables
(Huizingh, 2007). Fisher’s exact tests were used when required for quality control (Upton, 1992).
Results
Of the 150 participants, 53.3% were supportive of leopard cat protection (Supplementary Table 2). Furthermore, themajor- ity of the participants considered leopard cats to be important (85.3%), more than half perceived them positively (54.0%), and more than half considered protecting leopard cats to be more important than further development in the region (57.3%). The majority of the participants (56.7%) had a medium level of knowledge about leopard cats; only 3.3% had a high level of knowledge. Individuals with a higher level of education were more
supportive of leopard cat protection (Table 2, Fig. 2b), and participants younger than 45 years were more supportive than those 45 or older (Table 2, Fig. 2a). Farmers had the highest opposition (neutral/unsupportive) to leopard cat
Oryx, 2020, 54(6), 866–872 © 2019 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000984
2 2 8
16 2 2 1
χ2
2.802 8.38
4.612
13.892 1.56
0.742 8.262
P 0.238
0.012* 0.799 0.494 0.495 0.793
0.012*
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