2022 Volume 71 Issue 2 Pages 145-152
Compared with the USA and UK, fewer people in Japan feed wild birds in their gardens. One explanation for this difference is that the number of birdwatchers in Japan is small and therefore the number of people feeding wild birds is also small. Another explanation is that there is generally little interest in feeding wild birds in Japan. To see which of these explanations might be correct, or whether both are correct, firstly, we examined the membership of birdwatching organizations as an indicator of the number of birdwatchers in each of the three countries. Both the absolute number and the number relative to the population was by far the lowest in Japan. Secondly, in order to compare the intensity of interest in birdwatching and in bird feeding among the three countries, we compared the number of reviews and prices of products related to birdwatching and bird feeding on the Amazon e-commerce sites in each of the three countries. In the USA and the UK, there were more reviews for wild bird feeding products than for birdwatching products, whereas in Japan there were more reviews for birdwatching products. The average price of birdwatching products was higher than that for feeding in all three countries, but the difference was greatest in Japan, indicating that respondents spent more on birdwatching than on feeding birds. These findings suggest that the feeding birds in Japan is not widespread due to the small number of birdwatchers, and their lower interest in feeding birds, than in the other two countries.
