Shanghai residents attitudes towards raccoon dogs

Human-wildlife interactions become increasingly common in urban areas across all continents and ecosystem types. Depending on the context, human-wildlife interactions can be categorized as harmonious, neutral, or in conflict and raise cultural, economic, and ecological challenges in maintaining urban biodiversity. Understanding the mechanism behind the tolerance of residents to the presence of wildlife is vital to promoting a harmonious coexistence between humans and wildlife in urban environments. To advance our knowledge of this mechanism, we developed a questionnaire to survey residents in Shanghai, China about their knowledge of and attitude towards raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides), a species whose population is increasing in urban areas. Using 281 questionnaires, we conducted structural equation modeling to examine how relational values, including familiarity with raccoon dogs, perceived benefits and risks, together with residents’ trust in wildlife management authorities, i..., We developed a questionnaire and conducted a survey during April-June 2021 to investigate people’s knowledge, attitude, and tolerance towards raccoon dogs. Because the Wildlife Tolerance Model (WTM) described by Kansky et al. (2016) provided a theoretical framework for identifying the key drivers (e.g. cost, benefits) of people’s tolerance for wildlife, we followed and revised Kansky et al. (2016) to develop our questionnaire. We considered demographic variables including gender, age, and education as external variables because we hypothesized that these factors potentially influence residents' familiarity with raccoon dogs and their trust in the ability of wildlife management authorities (Table 1). We also included four variables of human dimensions, including familiarity with raccoon dogs, trust in the ability of wildlife management authorities, and perceived benefits and risks of raccoon dogs, to explain the tolerance of residents toward raccoon dogs (Table 1). We designed multiple c..., , # Shanghai residents attitudes towards raccoon dogs

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fj6q57430](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fj6q57430)

## Description of the data and file structure

Latent variable Measurement variables Questions in Survey Scale

Gender: What is your gender? 1=Female 2=Male

Age: What is your age? 1=18-30 2=31-50 3=51-70 4=70+

Education: What is your highest degree? 1=High school education and below 2=College degree 3=Bachelor's degree 4=Master's degree 5=Doctoral degree and above

Familiarity contact: Have you had any contact with raccoon dogs in your life? What level of contact? 1=No contact at all 2=I heard that the community has, but have not seen it in person 3=Seen with my own eyes, but did not touch 4=fed 5=touched/chased by raccoon dogs

knowledge: Which of the following statements do you think best fits what you know about raccoon dogs? 1=I don't know anything about raccoon dogs at all. 2=I know enough about raccoon dogs to make a judgment. 3=I have a basic ...