潜在クラスモデルを用いた野生動物管理に対する選好の多様性の評価

抄録

With increasing conflicts concerning wildlife issues, wildlife managers are continually challenged by stakeholders' expectations about wildlife management. To assist wildlife managers in their decision making, I used a choice experiment to examine the heterogeneity of resident preferences for brown bears (Ursus arctos) management in Shibetsu Town, northern Japan. In July 2011, a questionnaire survey was mailed to randomly selected residents. The result of a latent class model, which included respondents' characteristics and familiarity with bears as membership variables, showed the residents' heterogeneous preferences. Respondents were then segmented into two different groups. One group preferred to keep the bear population in the forest. This group also preferred using nonlethal measures (e.g., scaring bears) when bears roam into the town and croplands; yet, the group did not prefer installing electric fences around the town perimeter. In contrast, the other group persisted in lethal measures for bears caught in town, although they expressed indifference regarding the bear population, management of the croplands, fence installation, and management costs. Moreover, the latter group conveyed a greater fear of bears, though it had fewer experiences sighting wild bears than the former group. This study's findings suggest that bear management should be conducted considering residents' heterogeneity.