Survey of residents residents attitudes towards urban baboons on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, 2023

This dataset contains anonymized responses from a door-to-door survey conducted between May and October 2023 in residential areas of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, that are regularly frequented by baboons. The survey, part of the Unruly Natures project (Stockholm University), aimed to address a research gap on residents’ attitudes and experiences regarding urban baboons—a topic that is often polarized but lacks systematic data. The dataset includes 537 responses, collected from an area including about 3,300 households where every third home was contacted, of which approximately 50% completed our survey. Survey structure: Questions 1–3: Open-ended, asking respondents to describe memorable encounters with baboons. Questions 4–23: Multiple-choice, sliders, and triads capturing experiences, attitudes, and views on baboon management. Questions 24–31: Demographic information. All data have been fully anonymized to protect participant privacy. Files included: Unruly_Baboon_attitudes_survey_2023.xlsx (single sheet with 537 rows × 195 columns) README_updated.txt (variable names, coding schemes, and data structure) Unruly_SM_Questionnaire.pdf (full survey instrument) Methodological notes:Data were collected using the SenseMaker survey tool. Some residential areas were excluded from sampling due to access restrictions and safety concerns. Further details on methodology will be available in a forthcoming paper (Metelerkamp et al., in preparation). License:Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) Embargo:Data will be openly available from 2027-12-31 after the embargo period, to allow time for related publications. Until then, access can be requested from the corresponding author (ORCID: 0000-0002-6300-0572). DOI:10.5281/zenodo.17731528