Eliciting stakeholders’ preferences towards numerical control of invasive alien mammals: a factorial survey approach with the Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) in Italy.

Abstract

Management schemes for invasive mammals that may involve direct shooting of animals must possess two fundamental attributes for working: being attractive for voluntary hunters, who often replace professional gamekeepers, and being accepted by the general public, which would otherwise delegitimize agencies. Traditionally, surveys are adopted to elicit the management preferences of these two stakeholders and to inform policy-makers. However, they suffer from social desirability bias and factorial surveys, where respondents evaluate hypothetical scenarios describing alternative management options, are supposed to be a more effective tool. We tested the effectiveness of factorial surveys to measure the preferences of citizens (n=144) and hunters (n=134) towards various control schemes for invasive Eastern cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus) in Italy. Each factorial survey included a fixed number of management scenarios for cottontails, characterized by a fixed number of dimensions whose levels were assigned at random. Hunters declared whether they would have engaged in the various scenarios, while citizens rated their acceptability. Hunters were more prone to engage in control schemes for cottontails if these included shooting, rather than trapping, and if evidence of cottontail impacts over native wildlife or croplands was provided. Factorial surveys might be an effective tool to elicit their management preference for control schemes for invasive mammals in Europe. On the other hand, the attributes of the management scenarios did not affect their acceptability by citizens. This might underlie the existence of complex factors affecting the evaluation of wildlife management schemes by laymen, like Wildlife Value Orientations or negative emotions towards wildlife killing. Future research, combining qualitative in-depth research, structured questionnaires and experimental stimuli will be needed to provide further insights about them.