Human preferences for dogs and cats in China: the current situation and influencing factors of watching online videos and pet ownership

Dogs and cats have become the most important and successful pets through long-term domestication. People keep them for various reasons, such as their functional roles or for physical or psychological support. However, why humans are so attached to dogs and cats remains unclear. A comprehensive understanding of the current state of human preferences for dogs and cats and the potential influential factors behind it is required. Here, we investigate this question using two independent online datasets and anonymous questionnaires in China. We find that current human preferences for dog and cat videos are relatively higher than for most other interests, with video plays ranking among the top three out of fifteen interests. We also find genetic variations, gender, age, and economic development levels notably influence human preferences for dogs and cats. Specifically, dog and cat ownership are significantly associated with parents’ pet ownership of dogs and cats (Spearman’s rank correlation c..., , , # Human preferences for dogs and cats in China: the current situation and influencing factors of watching online videos and pet ownership

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qfttdz0rr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qfttdz0rr)

This dataset contains three CSV data files, each corresponding to one of the three parts described in the study.

## Description of the data and file structure

**“1, bilibili.csv”**: contains data extracted from the Bilibili website. Each row in the dataset represents yearly data for each popular channel. Missing data are indicated with NA.

* **ID**: The serial number for each video, ranging from 1 to 167368.
* **year**: The year the video was published on the website, from 2009 to 2021.
* **Videourl**: The URL of the video.
* **plays**: The total number of plays for the video.
* **likes**: The total number of likes for the video.
* **sort**: The ranking of the video in terms of play count among all popular videos in its channel for that year.
* **channelID**: The I...