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Primates' behavioural responses to tourists: evidence for a trade-off between potential risks and benefits.

ABSTRACT: The presence of, and interactions with tourists can be both risky and beneficial for wild animals. In wildlife tourism settings, animals often experience elevated rates of aggression from conspecifics, and they may also be threatened or physically aggressed by the tourists themselves. However, tourist provisioning of wild animals provides them with highly desirable foods. In situations of conflicting motivations such as this, animals would be expected to respond using behavioural coping mechanisms. In the present study, we investigated how animals respond to tourist pressure, using wild adult Barbary macaques in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco, as a case study. We found evidence that these animals use a range of different behavioural coping mechanisms-physical avoidance, social support, affiliative, aggressive and displacement behaviours-to cope with the stress associated with tourists. The pattern of use of such behaviours appears to depend on a trade-off between perceived risks and potential benefits. We propose a framework to describe how animals respond to conflicting motivational situations, such as the presence of tourists, that present simultaneously risks and benefits.

SUBMITTER: Marechal L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5032226 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Primates' behavioural responses to tourists: evidence for a trade-off between potential risks and benefits.

Maréchal Laëtitia L MacLarnon Ann A Majolo Bonaventura B Semple Stuart S

Scientific reports 20160915

The presence of, and interactions with tourists can be both risky and beneficial for wild animals. In wildlife tourism settings, animals often experience elevated rates of aggression from conspecifics, and they may also be threatened or physically aggressed by the tourists themselves. However, tourist provisioning of wild animals provides them with highly desirable foods. In situations of conflicting motivations such as this, animals would be expected to respond using behavioural coping mechanis ...[more]

PMID: 27628213

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Project description:BackgroundThe objectives of this study were to elicit the preferences of patients with multiple myeloma regarding the possible benefits and risks of cancer treatments and to illustrate how such data may be used to estimate patients' acceptance of new treatments.Patients and methodsPatients with multiple myeloma from the cancer charity Myeloma UK were invited to participate in an online survey based on multicriteria decision analysis and swing weighting to elicit individual stated preferences for the following attributes: (a) 1-year progression-free survival (PFS, ranging from 50% to 90%), (b) mild or moderate toxicity for 2 months or longer (ranging from 85% to 45%), and (c) severe or life-threatening toxicity (ranging from 80% to 20%).ResultsA total of 560 participants completed the survey. The average weight given to PFS was 0.54, followed by 0.32 for severe or life-threatening toxicity and 0.14 for mild or moderate chronic toxicity. Participants who ranked severe or life-threatening toxicity above mild or moderate chronic toxicity (56%) were more frequently younger, working, and looking after dependent family members and had more frequently experienced severe or life-threatening side effects. The amount of weight given to PFS did not depend on any of the collected covariates. The feasibility of using the collected preference data to estimate the patients' acceptance of specific multiple myeloma treatments was demonstrated in a subsequent decision analysis example.ConclusionStated preference studies provide a systematic approach to gain knowledge about the distribution of preferences in the population and about what this implies for patients' acceptance of specific treatments.Implications for practiceThis study demonstrated how quantitative preference statements from a large group of participants can be collected through an online survey and how such information may be used to explore the acceptability of specific treatments based on the attributes studied. Results from such studies have the potential to become an important new tool for gathering patient views and studying heterogeneity in preferences in a systematic way, along with other methods, such as focus groups and expert opinions.

Dataset Information

Primates' behavioural responses to tourists: evidence for a trade-off between potential risks and benefits.

Publications

Primates' behavioural responses to tourists: evidence for a trade-off between potential risks and benefits.

Similar Datasets

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