Xu Jiaping, Jiang Aiwu
Guangxi Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Conservation, College of Forestry, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Jan 28;13(3):457. doi: 10.3390/ani13030457.
The management of stray cats is often contentious because public perceptions about these animals are different. Using user-generated content from Weibo, this study investigated Chinese citizens' opinions on stray cats on a large scale. Through the techniques of natural language processing, we obtained each Weibo post's topics and sentiment propensity. The results showed that: (1) there were some irresponsible feeding behaviors among citizens; (2) public perceptions of the ecological impacts caused by stray cats were unlike; (3) the trap-neuter-return (TNR) method served high support in public discussion; (4) knowledge about stray cats' ecological impacts was positively correlated with support for the lethal control methods in management. Based on these findings, we suggested that management policies should be dedicated to (1) communicating to the (potential) cat feeders about the negative aspects of irresponsible feeding behaviors; (2) raising "ecological awareness" campaigns for the public as well as highlighting the environmental impacts caused by stray cats; (3) understanding citizens' perceptions toward different management scenarios and making decisions accordingly. In addition, this study also suggested that social media data can provide useful information about people's opinions on wild animals and their management. Policies would benefit by taking this source of information into the decision-making process.
流浪猫的管理常常存在争议，因为公众对这些动物的看法各不相同。本研究利用微博上的用户生成内容，大规模调查了中国公民对流浪猫的看法。通过自然语言处理技术，我们获取了每条微博帖子的主题和情感倾向。结果表明：（1）市民中存在一些不负责任的投喂行为；（2）公众对流浪猫造成的生态影响看法不一；（3）诱捕绝育放归（TNR）方法在公众讨论中获得了较高支持；（4）关于流浪猫生态影响的知识与对管理中致死控制方法的支持呈正相关。基于这些发现，我们建议管理政策应致力于：（1）向（潜在的）猫咪喂食者传达不负责任投喂行为的负面影响；（2）开展面向公众的“生态意识”活动，并强调流浪猫造成的环境影响；（3）了解市民对不同管理方案的看法并据此做出决策。此外，本研究还表明，社交媒体数据可以提供有关人们对野生动物及其管理看法的有用信息。将这一信息来源纳入决策过程将使政策受益。
