Predicting the Conservation Behaviour of Cat Owners: Involvement, Attitudes and Approach-Avoidance Conflict
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript is interesting because it deals with the issue of the impact of cats on wildlife. My comments are included in the attachment.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper examines the effect of engagement (a motivational indicator) on cat owners' willingness to keep their cats indoors at night by means of a questionnaire administered to 2,000 households in New Zealand, combining social psychological and marketing theories to deal with the approach-avoidance conflict regarding the decision to keep a companion cat indoors at night. The results of the study help to increase cat owners' motivation to keep their cats indoors at night, which has implications for reducing cat harm to wildlife. After carefully review, there are some special comments listed below.
1. In “2. Theory”, there are a number of statements that suffer from semantic repetition, for example, “The importance of a...... that stem from the decision”(page 5, line 142) and “Since importance is judged......, involvement logically has five components (or sources)”(page 5, line 147). It is recommended to double-check and simplify to ensure that each statement makes sense.
2. In “3. Materials and Methods”, why use data from 4 years ago?
3. In “4. Results”, why is the distribution of respondents by age, education, race, and income presented only in table form? It is recommended that bar graphs or pie charts be drawn to visualise the results.
4. The results of this article are presented in tabular form and there is only one graph in the whole article, it is recommended to increase the visualisation of the data. For example, Table 1 could be plotted with a correlation coefficient.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Moderate editing of English language required.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIn the absence of native felids in Oceania, the introduction of domestic cats and the subsequent establishment of wild (feral) populations has had well-reported negative consequences to small mammals, birds, reptiles and other wildlife. This is particularly acute in New Zealand, the focus of the manuscript, where mammalian carnivores are absent from the native terrestrial fauna. The manuscript reports a study using a survey instrument to canvas attitudes about confinement of cats (domestic) indoors as a measure to reduce their impact (predation) on native wildlife. A generous sample of respondents is divided into current cat owners, past cat owners and non-owners. The differences between these groups are teased out in the analysis. The results agree with other studies, as comprehensively reported by the authors, but the novelty of their analysis is to examine responses in the context of approach-avoidance conflict. This proves instructive and the authors arrive at conclusions that are likely to better encourage responsible cat ownership (removal or reduction in impact on wildlife) through managing harmonious beliefs in cat and wildlife welfare, and consequent beneficial actions.
The manuscript is well-written, but some minor (and curious) errors are apparent and suggestions for rectification are given in the following:
The authors frequently refer to ‘birds and wildlife’ whereas birds are typically considered as wildlife and so ‘birds and other wildlife’ is more accurate. The text may follow the former use from the survey instrument but there is no reason to continue this in the manuscript.
Line 72: don’t is conversational so ‘do not’.
Line 454: factor analysis
Line 516: Table 5 is about ants not cats?
Line 528-49: These proportions are presumably expressed as percentages and so should be labelled as such.
Page 18, line 9: The line numbering is reset? The sentence starts “native birds” so some text is missing?
Comments on the Quality of English Language
See above
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
