BMF CP40: Does living experience in rural locations affect urban residents’ intention and behavior of keeping uncommon pets?

AISDL Team
Email: aisdl_team@mindsponge.info

June 6, 2023

1. Project description

1.1. Introduction

While dogs and cats are commonly kept as pets, it is less likely for other animals, such as reptiles, insects, birds, fish, rodents, primates, etc. These relatively uncommon pets reflect a wider range of biodiversity. Humans spending the majority of their life living closer to nature may have different attitudes toward keeping uncommon pets due to their perceptions of biodiversity and species rarity. This study examines how living experience across rural, suburban, and urban environments affects Vietnamese urban residents’ interest in uncommon pets and adoption behavior.

1.2. Materials

In this research project, we use a dataset of 535 urban residents from Vietnam [1]. The research project follows the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) [2-3]. The bayesvl R package will be employed for statistical analyses [4]. Data and code snippets for this initial analysis were deposited at https://osf.io/kuhqf/

1.3. Main findings

Urban residents who spent the majority of their life living closer to nature are more interested in having uncommon pets, but age has a negative moderating effect on this relationship (see Figure 2). This is probably due to changes in the degree of nature exposure in Vietnam’s living environments.



Figure 1. Pairwise posterior distributions of Location and Age*Location

In Figure 2, the y-axis represents the interest in having uncommon pets, the x-axis represents age groups, and the line color represents where one spent the majority of one’s lifetime.



Figure 2. Estimated degrees of interest toward uncommon pets

Differences in age groups based on the context of Vietnam’s urban development may reflect the differences in species rarity perceptions, which involves the concept of the anthropogenic Allee effect [5,6].

These effects were not found for adoption behavior (actually keeping uncommon pets), indicating a value gap from intentions to behavior thresholds.

2. Collaboration procedure

Portal users should follow these steps to register to participate in this research project:

1. Create an account on the website (preferably using an institutional email).
2. Comment your name, affiliation, and desired project role below this post.
3. Patiently wait for the formal agreement on the project from the AISDL mentor.

If you have further inquiries, please contact us at aisdl_team@mindsponge.info

If you have been invited to join the project by an AISDL member, you are still encouraged to follow the above formal steps.

All the resources for conducting and writing the research manuscript will be distributed upon project participation.

AISDL mentor for this project: Tam-Tri Le

AISDL members who have joined this project: Ruining Jin, Minh-Hoang Nguyen, Quan-Hoang Vuong.

The research project strictly adheres to scientific integrity standards, including authorship rights and obligations [7], without incurring an economic burden at participants’ expenses [8].

References

[1] Nguyen MH. (2021). Multifaceted interactions between urban humans and biodiversity-related concepts: A developing-country dataset. Data Intelligence, 3(4), 578–605.

[2] Nguyen MH, La VP, Le TT, Vuong QH. (2022). Introduction to Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics: An innovative method for social and psychological research. MethodsX, 9, 101808.

[3] Vuong QH, Nguyen MH, La VP. (2022). The mindsponge and BMF analytics for innovative thinking in social sciences and humanities. De Gruyter.

[4] La VP, Vuong QH. (2019). bayesvl: Visually Learning the Graphical Structure of Bayesian Networks and Performing MCMC with ‘Stan’. The Comprehensive R Archive Network.

[5] Holden MH, McDonald-Madden E. (2017). High prices for rare species can drive large populations extinct: The anthropogenic Allee effect revisited. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 429, 170–180.

[6] Nguyen MH, Jones TE. (2022). Predictors of support for biodiversity loss countermeasure and bushmeat consumption among Vietnamese urban residents. Conservation Science and Practice, e12822.

[7] Vuong QH. (2020). Reform retractions to make them more transparent. Nature, 582(7811), 149.

[8] Vuong QH. (2018). The (ir)rational consideration of the cost of science in transition economies. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(1), 5.