Love Off, Fear On? Brown Bear Acceptance by Teenagers in European Countries with Differing Population Statuses

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The contribution addresses an important topic and the chosen target is interesting and the research can be useful overall.

The Introduction is sufficiently articulated and the methodology adequate.
However, two observations are important:

The research as a whole highlights the importance of Conservation Education. In order to be more effective it is suggested to make explicit in paragraph 4.5. and in the Conclusion the distinction between Education interventions that are focused on content and interventions that are directed to analyze and modify behaviours. If the aim of the study is not only descriptive, it is suggested to underline this difference, in order to 'characterize the drivers of species acceptance'. The urban-rural cline is interesting from a descriptive point of view, but it should be explored more deeply from a conservationist point of view. For example, that 'urban inhabitants would better accept the species' and that 'lower levels of acceptance were related to fear of bears' are expected results, but what does this mean from a conservationist point of view for the purposes of the study?

Below some detailed observations:

Line 40-41 I would suggest to explain more in detail

Line 56 I would explain more in detail

Line 152: I would suggest to add this material in Appendix

Line 233ss: it is an expected result

Line 316ss: can it be discussed more in relation to Conservation Education?

Author Response

Rev#1

Comments and answers

Comment

The research as a whole highlights the importance of Conservation Education. In order to be more effective it is suggested to make explicit in paragraph 4.5. and in the Conclusion the distinction between Education interventions that are focused on content and interventions that are directed to analyze and modify behaviours. If the aim of the study is not only descriptive, it is suggested to underline this difference, in order to 'characterize the drivers of species acceptance'. The urban-rural cline is interesting from a descriptive point of view, but it should be explored more deeply from a conservationist point of view. For example, that 'urban inhabitants would better accept the species' and that 'lower levels of acceptance were related to fear of bears' are expected results, but what does this mean from a conservationist point of view for the purposes of the study?

Answer

We agree with Rev#1, that results of research on the brown bear acceptance by teenagers are important to conservation education, however, primary aim was different. As it was said in Lines 77–79, “Our aim was to characterize the drivers of species acceptance, described as clines in the rural–urban inhabitation of respondents, in particular their relationship to nature, as well as their familiarity and encounters with bears.”

We intended to use not sociological approach, but human dimensions of the wildlife, as “study that looks into how the knowledge and attitudes towards natural resources affect the way how these resources are (or could be)managed.” So, the focus was on teenager’s knowledges, values and acceptance. Hence, implications to Conservation Education were just discussed; we were not seeking to find instruments for modification of teenagers’ behaviours.

We added short text before the Aim (Line 77), to explain our position more explicitly: “We used approach of the human dimensions of wildlife, not the sociological one, with focus teenager’s knowledges, values and BB acceptance [2,7,9,19,22,23,26,27]. Possible implications to conservation education were discussed, but we were not seeking to find instruments for modification of teenager behaviours.”

While being grateful for this Comment, we are open to cooperation and the senior author is ready to share raw data.

Below some detailed observations:

Comment: Line 40-41 I would suggest to explain more in detail

Answer: we extended text as requested, citing [9], namely “Perceptions and attitudes in students can be changed more easily than in adults; teenager students mostly determine their beliefs between 10 and 13 years and consolidate them around 16 years. Therefore, early age positive attitudes can be developed into more nature friendly views and may foster wildlife conservation in the future [9]

Comment: Line 56 I would explain more in detail

Answer: we extended text as requested, “On the other hand, urbanization does not seem a solution of human-wildlife conflicts because the actual conflict may not concern the wildlife. All conservation or damage-related conflicts finally are between humans with different interests, views and values [21], e.g. urban vs. rural inhabitants.”

Comment: Line 152: I would suggest to add this material in Appendix

Answer: we treat all filled questionnaires as sensitive information, therefore selected journal with no obligatory requirement for deposition of material. Survey was intended to test only brown bear acceptance, and we do not wish possibility of the database used for the other purposes without prior discussion. Besides, data amount is too big to add it as Appendix (367 printed pages). Line 152 was deleted, to avoid unnecessary discussion.

Comment: Line 233: it is an expected result

Answer: yes, but not all aspects. “Urban residents did not differ from rural ones about bear presence in the region (χ² = 0.19, NS) or the role of brown bears indicating the status of natural processes (χ² = 0.32, NS).” was not an expected result. So we re-phrased text in Line 239, to underline this. “Urban residents had a better general opinion about bears (χ² = 13.55, p < 0.001) and they more frequently thought bears are cute (χ² = 21.56, p < 0.001). Contrary to expectation, urban residents did not differ from rural ones about bear presence in the region (χ² = 0.19, NS) or the role of brown bears indicating the status of natural processes (χ² = 0.32, NS). As expected, urban residents were more afraid of bears – 80.4% of urban teenagers answered positively compared to 67.2% of rural teenagers (χ² = 37.33, p < 0.001).”

And, in the discussion we also show, that urban–rural cline was confirmed in other research (Lines 319–319): “The urban-rural cline in animal (including also LC) acceptance possibly is the main one and is almost always present [8,42–46].”

Comment: Line 316: can it be discussed more in relation to Conservation Education?

Answer: we understand Conservation Education as the process of influencing people's attitudes, emotions, knowledge, and behaviors about wildlife, habitats, ecosystems, and other elements of nature. Many different techniques and methods may be used. However, implication of our study was out of the scope of our investigation and not the aim of reviewed paper. We added text “Still, differences in BB acceptance between urban and rural inhabitants should be acknowledged in the conservation education programs.” In the end of 4.2 chapter.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Major concerns related to the theoretic framework that informed this study. It is not clear nor coherent. This is absolutely required if this paper is to be accepted. Theory and the related concepts are the cornerstone of good social science, and should be apparent in what you have done - what has guided your inquiry. There are reams of literature on assessing attitudes and values, management preferences and more in human dimensions research. It is not clear if you referred to this in your design or not. 

There is a lack of consistency or acceptable definition of "rural-urban cline" (line 51 for example - axis?).

Serious concerns over the survey design - how did you come up with the questions? What informed your study? This is related to my first point. Provide the full survey as supplemental for future review if this is to be considered for publication. Also, what do you mean by "do you think bears living in your region are good or bad?" I have a problem with this question, and others, on many levels. What does Good or bad mean? What are the bounds of these terms? Same with the question on bears being cute. What are you trying to understand? Again, a good study will be guided by theory, and in this case you should look at the work by Kellert or Manfredo or Teel. Or many others. 

To report results I highly suggest that you report in tables that show the comparison between each country, with a split between Rural and Urban, for the questions of most interest (though I am struggling to understand what these might be), similar to table 1. In table 2 remove the totals for bear and non-bear countries as this doesn't provide additional interesting information. 

Report your results sub-headings with reference to the hypotheses you tested.

What does "it is a nice animal and I would like to know it better" refer to? Is this related to teens' desires to learn about bears? And what does "nice" mean? What body of theory are you deriving this from? Again, see comment #1. 

Line 281 "better brown bear acceptance" - what does better mean?? And what about an urban lifestyle indicates better acceptance? What can you learn from other studies that indicate urbanites may be more positively inclined to support bear conservation (and note how I phrased that!). 

Line 283 is awkward - revealed importance familiarity with bears...?? and also where in your survey did you ask questions about experience with HWC? Need to see the survey and related responses. 

Line 307 "presume" - you can't presume - you need to outline very clearly the study limitations and biases as well as areas for future research.

Lines 309-311, 328-330, 344, and elsewhere are awkward. Edit the manuscript for comprehension and flow. 

You report that the "Internet" is a source for education - I strongly disagree with how you frame this. The Internet is not a single source. And are you suggesting specific campaigns with specific info directed at youth? Rethink what you are proposing here, read work done in Environmental Education journals, psychology or communications journals, and elsewhere, to help support your claims and make a stronger argument.  

Line 346 says you conducted an analysis of bear management systems? Where? Did I miss this? How is this related to assessing ten attitudes across countries? 

Line 351-351 you mention political systems but this seems out of left field. Don't just add a sentence on something that you think is a factor when its not introduced or explained well at all. Back up your assumptions with data or relevant literature. 

Lines 357-362 is a weak attempt at linking communications and educational outreach to conservation and management. See above comment on reviewing relevant literature. Don't just dabble in social science - its disrespectful. 

Line 365 auditorium? and what special methods? again see above comment. 

Lines 370-379 are better framed and worded. 

Line 378 you mention the "Internet" again, and then "better socialization". What does this even mean? You have a citation but it does not help when the term's intent is not clear.

Lines 398-400. What complex approaches? Do you mean multi-disciplinary? And if this is in reference to "the internet" then you need to be more clear.  Awareness-raising campaigns have also been criticized, and there are good papers on assessing communications and educational techniques with regards to bears. Read these and improve your paper. 

Consider a visual (ie Venn) representation with associated loadings of your components, and include in the main body rather than supplemental. 

Author Response

Rev#2

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment

Major concerns related to the theoretic framework that informed this study. It is not clear nor coherent. This is absolutely required if this paper is to be accepted. Theory and the related concepts are the cornerstone of good social science, and should be apparent in what you have done - what has guided your inquiry. There are reams of literature on assessing attitudes and values, management preferences and more in human dimensions research. It is not clear if you referred to this in your design or not. 

Answer

As for the theoretical framework, our study is far from interactionist perspective (everyday interactions between individuals treated as the basis for the development of society) and from conflict perspective (saying that social life as a competition, and focusing on the distribution of resources, power, and inequality). It is most close to the functionalist perspective, which sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. According it, all aspects of society are interdependent and contributes to society's stability and functioning as a whole. So, it may be thought, that teenagers are provided by knowledges (on brown bear), and in the future they may decide, which policy for the species conservation or acceptance is most important, etc.

The body of research on human–nature interactions is dispersed across a wide range of research disciplines [Soulsbury, C. D. (2020). Temporal patterns of human-fox interactions as revealed from internet searches. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 25(1), 70-81. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1080/10871209.2019.1666322]. We were most related to the framework of the Human dimensions in Natural resources, or, being more specific, in large carnivores. These studies look into how human knowledge and attitudes towards natural resources affect the way how natural resources are managed. Research on the human dimensions of wildlife conservation focuses on how people's knowledge, values, and behaviors influence and are affected by decisions about the conservation of wildlife and management of natural resources.

For both research and practice, it is important to acknowledge that the acceptability of LC management actions is not only guided by what people think, but also by what they feel [Straka, T. M., Miller, K. K., & Jacobs, M. H. (2020). Understanding the acceptability of wolf management actions: roles of cognition and emotion. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 25(1), 33-46.]. We do not pretend to classic sociological research, and all authors are biologists, but to human dimensions, which are more related to ecology and nature conservation. In this context, the main aim was “to characterize the drivers of species acceptance, described as differences of the species presence between countries, clines in the rural–urban inhabitation of respondents, in particular their relationship to nature, as well as their familiarity and encounters with bears”. The nature interactions people experience will be heavily dependent on the ecology of species, as well as their own opportunities and behaviour. [Gaston, K. J., Soga, M., Duffy, J. P., Garrett, J. K., Gaston, S., & Cox, D. T. (2018). Personalised ecology. Trends in ecology & evolution, 33(12), 916-925. ].

Concluding, our study is related to ecology of human–nature interactions and is not sociology nor pure human dimensions, but interdisciplinary. We think that extended discussion on the subject is out of the scope of manuscript, aim of the study and hypotheses tested.

Text added before the Aim (Line 77): “We used approach of the human dimensions of wildlife, with focus teenager’s knowledges, values and BB acceptance [2,7,9,19,22,23,26,27].“

Few sentences also added to the final chapter of Discussion, as well as 2 new references.

Comment

There is a lack of consistency or acceptable definition of "rural-urban cline" (line 51 for example - axis?).

Answer

Changed to “cline”, as in the context of species acceptance possible term could be “rural-urban cline”, “rural-urban axis” as well as “difference between rural and urban respondents”. In the Line 51 we changed “axis” to “cline”.

Comment

Serious concerns over the survey design - how did you come up with the questions? What informed your study? This is related to my first point. Provide the full survey as supplemental for future review if this is to be considered for publication.

Answer

Questionnaire was based on two previous investigations.

1. Large carnivores in northern landscapes: an interdisciplinary approach to their regional conservation, project funded from The Research Council of Norway (Oslo), 2002–2006, GRANT_NUMBER: 156810, URL: https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.4660679;

Report: Linnell, J. D. C., Skogen, K., Andersone-Lilley, Ž., Balčiauskas, L., Herfindal, I., Kowalczyk, R., Jędrzejewski, W., Mannil, P., Okarma, H., Olszanska, A., Ornicans, A., Ozoliņš, J., Poltimäe, R., Randveer, T., Schmidt, K., Valdmann, H. 2010 Large carnivores in northern landscapes. Status survey, conflicts, human dimensions, ecology and conservation of bears, lynx and wolves in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Draft Final report: 1–116

Four of the authors took part in the project.

2. Paper of the Ambarlı, H. Rural and Urban Students’ Perceptions of and Attitudes toward Brown Bears in Turkey. Anthrozoös 2016, 29, 489–502.. We kept full compatibility with it, as data for Turkey were already collected.
3. Questionnaires for teenagers and children were designed as straightforward and simple, as referred in Bell, A. (2007). Designing and testing questionnaires for children. Journal of Research in Nursing, 12(5), 461-469. And Boynton, P. M., & Greenhalgh, T. (2004). Selecting, designing, and developing your questionnaire. Bmj, 328(7451), 1312-1315.

As for presenting full survey – if this is questionnaire – it is presented in the figure 2 in the reviewed manuscript. However, data amount is far too big to add it as Appendix (367 printed pages).

Comment

Also, what do you mean by "do you think bears living in your region are good or bad?" I have a problem with this question, and others, on many levels. What does Good or bad mean? What are the bounds of these terms? Same with the question on bears being cute. What are you trying to understand? Again, a good study will be guided by theory, and in this case you should look at the work by Kellert or Manfredo or Teel. Or many others. 

Answer

Unfortunately, we cannot change study design backwards, hence, we may only explain what was under the wording used in the questionnaires.

1. The good/bad, cute/fearsome are just the relative words that can be differently understood depending on individual experience, but our goal was to know reviewer’s attitude about brown bears. We may not be sure, what the word “good” means for a teenager, because many of respondents can describe “good” according to their believes, religion and family experience, etc.
2. We did not speculate about how much the teenagers considering bears “good” will contribute to conservation, but we confirmed the hypothesis that acceptance is related to fear. And those who expressed fear, hardly will call an animal “cute” or “good”
3. Our study is related to ecology of human–nature interactions and is not sociology nor pure human dimensions, but interdisciplinary.
4. We used simplified wording and most simple questionnaire, responding to the age of respondents.
5. Such wording (good/bad, cute/fearsome) was already used in the “Large carnivores in northern landscapes: an interdisciplinary approach to their regional conservation”, project funded from The Research Council of Norway (Oslo), 2002–2006 – survey in the 4 countries, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland; three country-wide surveys of attitudes to large carnivores and one to European bison in Lithuania; two surveys of children in Latvia on large carnivores and otters; many papers (Ozoliņš J. 2001a, b; Andersone, Ozolins, 2004; Balčiauskas, Randveer, Volodka, 2005; Balčiauskas, Volodka, Kazlauskas, 2007; Balčiauskas, Kazlauskas, 2008; Balčiauskas, Kazlauskas, 2012, 2014; Ambarlı, 2016; Balčiauskas, Kazlauskas, Balčiauskienė, 2017).
6. We understand, that “bad” in sociology could be interpreted in many ways; however, we do not pretend here to analyse reasons why “bear is bad” – questions were simple, so is the analysis.
7. For teenagers clearly express their attitudes, we added emoticons to the questions. Questions were kept simple, as recommended by Bell, A. (2007). Designing and testing questionnaires for children. Journal of Research in Nursing, 12(5), 461-469. and Boynton, P. M., & Greenhalgh, T. (2004). Selecting, designing, and developing your questionnaire. Bmj, 328(7451), 1312-1315.

Comment

To report results I highly suggest that you report in tables that show the comparison between each country, with a split between Rural and Urban, for the questions of most interest (though I am struggling to understand what these might be), similar to table 1. In table 2 remove the totals for bear and non-bear countries as this doesn't provide additional interesting information. 

Answer

We removed totals as requested from the Table 2. To keep caption self-contained, we expanded it: “Table 2. Differences between the fear of the brown bear in teenager respondents living in the bear (Bulgaria, Turkey) and non-bear (Latvia, Lithuania) countries. ...“

However, we find to report data in multilevel tables as requested not possible: 4 countries x 2 = 8 columns. Question is answered with minimum 3 (and up to 5 choices) – that is, 24 to 40 cells per question with number or percentage. Will this give essential and new information – we doubt.

Comment: Report your results sub-headings with reference to the hypotheses you tested.

Answer: after 3.1 chapter was removed, first three chapters in Results are in accordance with hypotheses H1–H3.

Comment

What does "it is a nice animal and I would like to know it better" refer to? Is this related to teens' desires to learn about bears? And what does "nice" mean? What body of theory are you deriving this from? Again, see comment #1. 

Answer

In biology, factors should have explanation or description, or title. From the Table S2, Factor 1 is composed from Q4–Q9, expressing positive attitude to the brown bears and Q15, with a wish to know more about them.

We fully agree, that the word “nice” is not the best one, as it does not include elements of positiveness and usefulness. It was used as a substitute for the word “cute”, and we were wrong. As to our best knowledge in English there is no one word including both elements, we changed factor description: “It is a cute and useful animal which I would like to know better"

Comment

Line 281 "better brown bear acceptance" - what does better mean?? And what about an urban lifestyle indicates better acceptance? What can you learn from other studies that indicate urbanites may be more positively inclined to support bear conservation (and note how I phrased that!). 

Answer

According to paper scheme, discussion is started from the short statement on Results, and not a literature review, and this small paragraph intends to show the summary. We changed this text to : “Our results show, that higher level of BB acceptance by teenagers in four European countries was related to urban lifestyle; bear presence or absence in the country had no influence, and fear of respondents determined lower levels of acceptance. Factor analysis revealed importance familiarity with bears, experiences in human-wildlife conflict, gender-age differences, respondent's relationship to nature and the origin of their knowledge of the species.”

Comment

Line 283 is awkward - revealed importance familiarity with bears...?? and also where in your survey did you ask questions about experience with HWC? Need to see the survey and related responses. 

Answer

We apologize for mistyping, should read “revealed importance of the familiarity with bears…”

HWC was in the question 16, “Have you (your family or relatives) ever had any damage (property/orchards/apiary) caused by a bear?” – see Figure 2. 81 positive answer was from Turkey, 29 from Bulgaria, absolute most were rural respondents.

Comment

Line 307 "presume" - you can't presume - you need to outline very clearly the study limitations and biases as well as areas for future research.

Answer

Text changed according Comment, now Line 307 is: “We found that time spent outdoors by teenagers in rural Turkey (mostly agriculture-related activities) was correlated with their positive BB acceptance.”

Also, we started new paragraph inline 309, to separate factor 5 from the factor 4

Comment

Lines 309-311, 328-330, 344, and elsewhere are awkward. Edit the manuscript for comprehension and flow. 

Answer

Lines 309–311, text changed to: “Everyday encounters are very important for knowing various animal species [41]. Factor 5 of the BB acceptance in our study included encounters of respondents with bears and bear-incurred damages (both very unlikely in the non-bear countries). In Slovenia, however, the key factor in predicting the attitude towards bears was the perception of how harmful the bears are [25], not their real damage and its regional differences.”

Lines 328–330, text edited as follows:

“In general, younger children seem more positive to carnivores than older ones [45,49].” Moved to the next paragraph

And the first paragraph is “Way of obtaining knowledge on LC differs between age groups and countries [40]. In our study, the main source of knowledge in all countries was TV, while school was also very important in non-bear countries, reading in Bulgaria, and verbal information (talks) – in Turkey (see Figure 4). With children generally spending more time watching TV in modern times [50], these channels (school and TV) could be used in the formation of BB acceptance.”

Comment

Line 344

Answer

To improve text flow, we interchanged 4.3 and 4.4 in Discussion.

To get link with previous chapter, after the mentioned change Line 344 we rephrased as: “Urban inhabitants can hardly have any damage from wild animals, hence the issue of LC damage seems closely related to the urban-rural cline of their acceptance [10,37].”

Comment

You report that the "Internet" is a source for education - I strongly disagree with how you frame this. The Internet is not a single source. And are you suggesting specific campaigns with specific info directed at youth? Rethink what you are proposing here, read work done in Environmental Education journals, psychology or communications journals, and elsewhere, to help support your claims and make a stronger argument.  

Answer

Science is good for the freedom of opinions, views and judgements – and yes, authors decided that Internet is directly related to education. We see internet-related reality under XYZ generation framework, where Generation Z are those born after 1997. All our respondents are upper cohort of generation Z (so called post-millennials). They “arrived with a tablet and a smartphone under their arms.”

Further citation “But what is Generation Z? It is a group of people that is marked by the Internet. It is part of their DNA: it storms into their homes, their education and their way of socializing…. Their mastery of technologies may make them neglect their interpersonal relationships to a greater extent, but they are the ones who give more of a voice to social causes on the Internet. They like to get everything they want immediately, a fact fostered by the digital world in which they are immersed, and their lifestyle is also influenced by youtubers.”

“Why is Internet important in our life? The internet is very important because it is the limitless space where people have access to pretty much infinite amounts of information. The internet is where a large amount of knowledge comes from. “

And this is what we said in a very soft way, about using popular internet portals as a tool for environmental education.

See: Wegerif, R., Doney, J., Richards, A., Mansour, N., Larkin, S., & Jamison, I. (2017). Exploring the ontological dimension of dialogic education through an evaluation of the impact of Internet mediated dialogue across cultural difference. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction. doi:10.1016/j.lcsi.2017.10.003;

Warf, B. (2019). Teaching Digital Divides. Journal of Geography, 118(2), 77-87.

Comment

Line 346 says you conducted an analysis of bear management systems? Where? Did I miss this? How is this related to assessing ten attitudes across countries? 

Answer

This is citation of the [52] reference, not our data. We changed text to make this clear: “Analysis of the bear management systems between 2005–2012 from 26 European countries including Latvia and Bulgaria showed, that over 3200 cases of BB incurred damage were compensated in Europe annually, mainly in the Mediterranean region and in Eastern Europe [52]. At that time, within the Baltic bear range, losses were compensated only in Estonia, where damage level was minor compared to bear numbers and claims were related mainly to apiaries.”

Comment

Line 351-351 you mention political systems but this seems out of left field. Don't just add a sentence on something that you think is a factor when its not introduced or explained well at all. Back up your assumptions with data or relevant literature. 

Answer: We deleted “Political history is also another factor influencing acceptance of LC species [1].”

Comment

Lines 357-362 is a weak attempt at linking communications and educational outreach to conservation and management. See above comment on reviewing relevant literature. Don't just dabble in social science - its disrespectful. 

Answer:

We rewrote 4.5 chapter in Discussion, however please accept our position – we discuss only some aspects of our study, not trying to get deep into the field of sociology. In our Results, we have only evaluation of the sources of information on the large carnivores as reported by teenagers. We use this information in 4.4, and link it to 4.3 in discussion. Text changes are as follow:

“Finally, thinking about the future of LC conservation, we should not ignore the attitudes of the coming generation [17]. Carnivore interactions with humans will depend on the ecology of species, as well as on people opportunities and behaviour [53]. It is important to acknowledge that the acceptability of LC management is not only guided by what people think, but also by what they feel [54]. Fear of LC is characteristic to humans independent of age [55], and the understanding of animals, intellectual and cognitive, occurs mainly between the fifth and eighth grade [56].

After analysis of 59 countries with resident bear populations it was found, that educating people and raising of public awareness is recognized as a tool to resolve human-bear conflict [57,58]. More people typically use the internet as their primary source of information, so information on human-animal interactions is very important [54], yet it not always is raising species acceptance. For example, analysis of the main internet portals in Lithuania (sources analysed www.delfi.lt, www.lrytas.lt, www.15min.lt, www.valstietis.lt) for news concerning brown bears (2010–2018) revealed, that the main message was " we have visiting bears after a hundred years of extermination, that’s nice, but they might be dangerous to humans“ (Balčiauskas, Balčiauskienė, unpubl).”

Comment

Line 365 auditorium? and what special methods? again see above comment. 

Answer

We apologize mistake, “auditorium” was a wrong word. We clarified this, however, aim of the paper is far from extended discussion on the methods, so we add only one reference:

“In the Latvian Action Plan for Brown Bear Ursus arctos Conservation, the action of informing society is foreseen, not targeting specifically to different age groups [30]. Children and teenagers, however, may require special methods, for example, residential outdoor environmental education [59].”

Comment: Lines 370-379 are better framed and worded. 

Answer: thank you

Comment

Line 378 you mention the "Internet" again, and then "better socialization". What does this even mean? You have a citation but it does not help when the term's intent is not clear.

Answer

[45] points out to place of residence as a more important driver of attitude than age or socializing, but socializing is still under consideration. The same authors show, that level of social interaction is increasing. So we presumed, that for teenagers internet is one of the ways of socializing. In the same time, dominant opinion of the urban inhabitants (positive for large carnivores) is easily delivered to rural inhabitants, overcoming negative acceptance resulted by damage of these predators.

Expanded text is: “Swedish scientists pointed out that place of residence as a more important driver of attitude than age or socializing. However, the level of social interactions in the society is increasing [45]. We presume, that for teenagers popular internet portals is one of the ways of socializing. In the same time, carnivore-positive opinion of the urban inhabitants is easily delivered to rural ones, overcoming negative acceptance resulted by damage of these predators.”

Comment

Lines 398-400. What complex approaches? Do you mean multi-disciplinary? And if this is in reference to "the internet" then you need to be more clear.  Awareness-raising campaigns have also been criticized, and there are good papers on assessing communications and educational techniques with regards to bears. Read these and improve your paper. 

Answer

Conclusions were shortened according the comment of Rev#3

And, to our best knowledge, awareness raising campaigns (mainly called “education/awareness raising” tool) is still accepted, and in 36% of cases emphasized as one of the main tools (Can, Ö.E.; D'Cruze, N.; Garshelis, D.L.; Beecham, J.; Macdonald, D.W. Resolving human‐bear conflict: a global survey of countries, experts, and key factors. Conserv Lett 2014, 7, 501–513. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1111/conl.12117.)

Comment

Consider a visual (ie Venn) representation with associated loadings of your components, and include in the main body rather than supplemental. 

Answer

We present information on the results of Factor analysis in the way mostly used by biologists (tables with explained variance and with factor(s and their loadings. Venn diagram, of course, has better visual representation, but is not in full accordance what we intended to achieve:

1. We reduced number of variables and got factors, which were named (e.g., “Gender related fear”, “Way of life”, etc.)
2. We are not sure, that intersection of the factors in Vienn diagram should be interpreted with the AND logic (see below), and
3. Chapter 3.4 represents main result for the drivers; technical data are in the supplement.

Thus, we remain on the way used in the reviewed manuscript version.

Context:

• We understand a Venn diagram is an illustration of the relationships between and among sets, used to depict setintersections (we did not seek this). The intersection relation is defined as the equivalent of the logic AND. An element is a member of the intersection of two sets if and only if that element is a member of both sets. (https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Venn-diagram).
• Factor analysis is the simplification of a number of interrelated measures. It describes the data using fewer dimensions than original variables. It aims to order and give structure to observed variables (that’s what we did). The relationship between a symptom and a factor is measured by a correlation coefficient known as a factor loading (we present these in the supplement Tables). In this way we measure different aspects of the symptom picture, based on the way symptoms cluster together within factors and on the size of the factor loadings (https://0-www-sciencedirect-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/factor-analysis).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting paper on an important topic—nice to get teenagers’ views.  But it suffers from organizational and presentation problems.  First, the authors should make the hypotheses in lines 80-82 much clearer and more emphasized, and they should present the results in terms of the hypotheses.  Then they should make sure the reader knows from the beginning that the access was through school systems, and maybe not give so many details about how.  Did they cross-translate to make sure their translations were accurate?  The long section reporting on distribution of ages and genders is not useful.  Then the sections on acceptance and urban-rural differences have way too much detail.  Significant differences get lost in all this, and the question-by-question evaluation is not necessary.  The section on ‘main drivers’ is a good factor analysis, yet the rationale for both the test and the particular categories isn’t well explained.  Then, country differences are presented in the Discussion and not in the Results, and sections 4.2 and 4.3 are likewise presenting results and not a discussion. Only genuine discussion and sections like 4.4 and 4.5 belong here, the other parts need to be back in Results and simpler.  A Conclusions section is not necessary but if included it should be very brief, a simple sentence per conclusion.  Finally, the language is not clear colloquial English.  It is understandable, but the authors need to get a native English speaker to polish the language.

Author Response

Rev#3

Comments and answers

Comment

First, the authors should make the hypotheses in lines 80-82 much clearer and more emphasized, and they should present the results in terms of the hypotheses.

Answer

After the changes, first three Result chapters are in line with hypotheses H1–H3.

Comment

Then they should make sure the reader knows from the beginning that the access was through school systems, and maybe not give so many details about how.  Did they cross-translate to make sure their translations were accurate?

Answer

We changed Lines 17–18 in the Abstract to clarify about schools, “We analysed acceptance of brown bears (Ursus arctos Linnaeus, 1758) by 10–18 year old teenagers in four European countries using anonymous questionnaires distributed through schools.”, also add explanation to the former Line 132.

And yes, we did everything to ensure questionnaires are identic in all four languages. Having previous experience in the multilanguage projects on large carnivores, four of the authors checked translations by discussing through e-mail. However, we had no multilanguage speakers, so only precision of the translation from English was ensured for all languages. We clarified text: “From an English version of the questionnaire (Fig. 2), uniformly accurate translations were prepared in each of the national languages by native speakers.” The only allowed difference is explained in the caption of Fig. 2

Comment

The long section reporting on distribution of ages and genders is not useful.  Then the sections on acceptance and urban-rural differences have way too much detail.  Significant differences get lost in all this, and the question-by-question evaluation is not necessary. 

Answer

We agree with the comment, so Figure on the age distribution was placed as Figure S1 in supplementary materials, and shortened text from 3.1 moved to 2.2, as sample structure. Shortened text is now “In all countries respondent gender distribution was 1:1, between-country differences were not significant either (χ² = 3.8, NS). The distribution of age between countries was not uniform (Kruskal-Wallis, H = 294.6, p < 0.001). The average (±SD) respondent’s age in Bulgaria was 12.65±1.41 (range 11–18) years, in Turkey 12.89±1.12 (10–15), in Latvia 13.87±1.06 (11–16) and in Lithuania 14.28±1.87 (11–17) years. Marginal frequencies on both sides of the range were small: 98.3% of respondents were 11–16 year old (Figure S1). However, answers of marginal respondent groups were not significantly different from the other age groups, thus, we did not exclude these groups from further analyses.“

We strongly think, that question on the influence of marginal respondent groups should be tested and acknowledged in the text, as from Figure S1 existence of these groups is clearly expressed.

Comment

The section on ‘main drivers’ is a good factor analysis, yet the rationale for both the test and the particular categories isn’t well explained.  Then, country differences are presented in the Discussion and not in the Results, and sections 4.2 and 4.3 are likewise presenting results and not a discussion.

Answer and Partial rebuttal

Answering to the first comment here, we added explaining text “To find what are the main drivers of brown bear acceptance among teenagers, factor analysis was carried out using the Principal Components…” in 2.4 chapter.

Country differences are analysed in 3.1 chapter of results, just we use country (nationality) as a proxy for bear numbers or presence. To make this clear, we changed title of 3.1, to “3.1. Bear acceptance in relation of the species presence (country-related differences)“.

However we cannot agree, that 4.1 chapter in Discussion has text belonging to Results – we compare our results with literature sources, or discuss results using information about the surveyed co8untires.

The same about 4.2 and 4.3 4.3 (as explained above, results of Bautista et al. 2017 not ours) – these have no Results, and if there are data from literature sources – data are used just to discuss out results. We did not find parts of the Discussion in 4.2 and 4.3 that may be moved to Results.

Comment

Only genuine discussion and sections like 4.4 and 4.5 belong here, the other parts need to be back in Results and simpler.

Rebuttal

Sections 4.4 and 4.5 have no Results, and if there are data from literature sources – data are used just to discuss our results. We did not find parts of the Discussion in 4.4 and 4.5 that may be moved to Results.

Comment

Conclusions section is not necessary but if included it should be very brief, a simple sentence per conclusion. 

Answer

We shortened Conclusions as required. However, Rev#2 and Rev#1 had no comments on the length of text in Conclusions, so used not a drastic, but moderate way.

Comment

Finally, the language is not clear colloquial English.  It is understandable, but the authors need to get a native English speaker to polish the language.

Answer

Language was re-checked by native speaker Jonathan Stratford, having Certificate in the teaching of English, University of Cambridge (Centre number 56677), and working at Nature Research Centre as Language Editor. We apologize any former mistypes or language deviations.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I am still struggling with this study and how it is presented, notably the lack of critical fore or afterthought to social science theory and methods. It remains offensive as a conservation social scientists that it appears the authors treat the theoretical underpinnings and methodological considerations - cornerstones in ANY good social science, and arguably natural scientific study - as trivial. There is some improvement in framing the purpose of the study but human dimensions of wildlife management is arguably NOT a theory or set of methods in conservation biology/social science - it is a sub-discipline. It remains apparent to me that the theoretical guidance to this study is the cognitive hierarchy, along with social psychology insofar as knowledge, attitudes and behavior are in question. However, there are still many "presumptions" as the authors use, made in this manuscript, and terms and assertions over findings are too rigid yet broad sweeping and do little to convince me of the claims. I understand that the authors can only use the data they have BUT they should be bounding this with the limitations and biases they have AND give a nod to the fact that they didn't actually conduct this with social scientists or theory in mind. This is evident by the survey tool, and yes while I can understand the need to tailor a tool such as this for youth, the questions are very loaded and in my humble opinion poorly framed (i.e., which animal you like the most?" "What animals you fear the most?") What does this even mean, do we know what "like" means?? There are reams of literature that could have been used in the design. Since they did not, there are reams of literature they should be referring to in this manuscript, and use this as a lessons learned of what not to do in survey design. Another example of this is the authors assertion that bear presence plays a role in attitudes. Based on the survey question (Q9), I have a hard time drawing this parallel. The authors should be stating their results with MUCH more caution than they do.  Another example of over stating results is Line 251 indicating "fear was quite well expressed".  What does this even mean? Rephrase and be very. very cautious about how you are explaining your results. Also, as I said earlier you should be citing literature on what "cute" means - since you did not actually ask students what cute means. You could have used factor analysis around different statements to learn what cute means, or include an open field to ask for this description. Moreover, why does cute matter? Again, look to the literature because your data does not give us anything to go off of. In the Discussion I expect the authors to reiterate key findings and support with relevant literature, identify future research opportunities, etc. Curious why the authors just cite apiary owners on Line 298? I believe this is the first time this has come up and is random. Other literature that could be used to explain findings is communications theory, or social capital theory. You also use the term stories and assert that teens relationship to nature is becoming more and more important under the current decline of interest in biology. This doesn't make sense to me, You need to carefully outline what it is you want to discuss, use your findings to support that alongside literature to support your interpretation of the results.  Economic background being introduced in Line 319 is also the first we've seen you suggest this is a factor in BB acceptance. You need more synergy and clarity in your discussion. Lines 353-359 are your findings but you offer no suggestion of interpretation - why this is what you think it is - and don't back it up with literature. Line 371 where you state you did an analysis of internet portals??  I see no evidence of this and it is HIGHLY offensive to the field of social science, as you would need to use content analysis for example to do this. What I think you did, at  best based on what I see here, is a review of the sources you cite. If you did otherwise then you need to explain the methods, search strings, coding, etc. for the "analysis". 

Author Response

Answers to Rev#2 comments

Comment: I am still struggling with this study and how it is presented, notably the lack of critical fore or afterthought to social science theory and methods. It remains offensive as a conservation social scientists that it appears the authors treat the theoretical underpinnings and methodological considerations - cornerstones in ANY good social science, and arguably natural scientific study - as trivial. There is some improvement in framing the purpose of the study but human dimensions of wildlife management is arguably NOT a theory or set of methods in conservation biology/social science - it is a sub-discipline. It remains apparent to me that the theoretical guidance to this study is the cognitive hierarchy, along with social psychology insofar as knowledge, attitudes and behavior are in question.

Answer: thank you for this comment. In the former answer we stated that „we were most related to the framework of the Human dimensions in Natural resources, or, being more specific, in large carnivores. These studies look into how human knowledge and attitudes towards natural resources affect the way how natural resources are managed. Research on the human dimensions of wildlife conservation focuses on how people's knowledge, values, and behaviors influence and are affected by decisions about the conservation of wildlife and management of natural resources.“

Thus, we do not pretend to sophisticated social science. Our aim was “to characterize the drivers of species acceptance, described as differences in the species presence between the countries, clines in the rural–urban inhabitation of the respondents and, in particular, their relationship to nature as well as their familiarity and encounters with bears.” Drivers are listed, and we do not pretend to social psychology. Below is definition of it (from literature), so as we understand, there is a difference with our aim:

• Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others....The statement that others' presence may be imagined or implied suggests that humans are malleable to social influences even when alone. In such situations, people can be influenced to follow internalized cultural norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the interaction of mental states and social situations. Social psychologists examine factors that cause behaviors to unfold in a given way in the presence of others. They study conditions under which certain behavior, actions, and feelings occur. Social psychology is concerned with the way these feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and goals are cognitively constructed and how these mental representations, in turn, influence our interactions with others.

Along with Bennett et al., 2016 „Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation“ we agree, that (1) there are distinct contributions that the social sciences can make to conservation and (2) better understanding of the human dimensions of environmental issues can improve conservation. We fully agree that results of our work may be useful for social psychologists, to understand better how attitudes of teenagers are formed. However, this was not our aim in the reviewed manuscript.

We are most close to cognitive hierarchy in the wildlife dimensions, as shown in Vaske, J.J.; Donnelly, M.P. A value-attitude-behavior model predicting wildland voting intentions. Soc Natur Resour 1999, 523–527. To acknowledge this, we added text “Our work is close to the cognitive hierarchy approach of human dimensions of wildlife as in [30], with a focus on how teenager’s knowledge, attitudes and values affect their BB acceptance.” However scheme of the cognitive hierarchy model of human behavior, as presented in the cited paper, was not strictly followed.

Comment: However, there are still many "presumptions" as the authors use, made in this manuscript, and terms and assertions over findings are too rigid yet broad sweeping and do little to convince me of the claims. I understand that the authors can only use the data they have BUT they should be bounding this with the limitations and biases they have AND give a nod to the fact that they didn't actually conduct this with social scientists or theory in mind. This is evident by the survey tool, and yes while I can understand the need to tailor a tool such as this for youth, the questions ar framed (i.e., which animal you like the most?" "What animals you fear e very loaded and in my humble opinion poorly the most?") What does this even mean, do we know what "like" means?? There are reams of literature that could have been used in the design. Since they did not, there are reams of literature they should be referring to in this manuscript, and use this as a lessons learned of what not to do in survey design.

Answer: to be clear we did not use a classic sociological approach, Lines 84–86 were extended as „We used not a sociological, but a human dimensions of wildlife approach, focusing on the teenagers' knowledge, values and BB acceptance [2,7,9,19,22,23,26,27].“

As in Kato et al., 2019 „Investigating Gaps in Perception of Wildlife between Urban and Rural Inhabitants: Empirical Evidence“, and as in Merriam Webster, we did not put any load into the word „like“ except this „to have or express a favorable opinion of“. In some kind „like“ is a substitute for words „acknowledge, favor, recognize“ but it should be noted, that main aim was to express positiveness (towards the species). We did not see results could be different, if we use another word from the synonyms.

Comment: Another example of this is the authors assertion that bear presence plays a role in attitudes. Based on the survey question (Q9), I have a hard time drawing this parallel. The authors should be stating their results with MUCH more caution than they do. 

Rebuttal: Well, in 3.1. Bear acceptance in relation to species presence (country-related differences) we do not refer to the Q9 as a basis for classifying countries (bear- or no bear-) – we analyze distribution of answers on the basis of species presence. Hence, there is no parallel.

Comment: Another example of over stating results is Line 251 indicating "fear was quite well expressed".  What does this even mean? Rephrase and be very. very cautious about how you are explaining your results. Also, as I said earlier you should be citing literature on what "cute" means - since you did not actually ask students what cute means. You could have used factor analysis around different statements to learn what cute means, or include an open field to ask for this description. Moreover, why does cute matter? Again, look to the literature because your data does not give us anything to go off of.

Answer: According comment, we changed text to „"fear was relatively well expressed". The percentages of those who expressed fear are given in the Table 2.

For the word “cute” – see https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/cute: the most synonyms are „adorable, beautiful, charming, delightful, pleasant, pretty“. However, please have in mind, that all questionnaires were in the national language, so question was presented as "Ayılar sizce sevimli hayvanlar mı?" or „Kaip manote, ar lokiai mieli gyvūnai?“, and to discuss if all translations refer to “cute” equally is out of the aims and scope of the manuscript. The question four, five and six are complementary to understand whether really students think bears are lovely or scary animals. These answers also provide opportunity to compare answers to questions 17 and 18.

However, word “cute” is being used in so many papers without an analysis of the meaning. For example

• Sustainability, Kato et al., 2019 wrote “cute” was selected as the representative word for “cute”, “charming”, and “pretty.”
• Anthrozoös, Herzog & Burghardt, 1988. Just „cute animals“ with no analysis what does this means.
• Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Stavropoulos, Alba, 2018
• Tourism Management Perspectives, Carr, 2016
• in Anthrozoös, Borgi, Cirulli, 2015: „humans also tend to prefer animals that they perceive as aesthetically appealing or “cute” (Gunnthorsdottir 2001; Stokes 2007; Knight 2008; Archer and Monton 2011).

Neither we discuss „cutification“ as in Humanity & Society, Grauerholz, 2007 „Cutification. Images were coded as to whether the depiction showed (1) the animal illustrated so as to appear cute, (2) a realistic looking animal in a cute, funny or ironic situation, (3) a baby animal, (4) the animal in a manner to make the consumption of animals unattractive, or (5) no obvious attempt to appear cuter than normal.“ Or in Animal Welfare, Bradshaw and Paul, 2010.

Comment: In the Discussion I expect the authors to reiterate key findings and support with relevant literature, identify future research opportunities, etc. Curious why the authors just cite apiary owners on Line 298? I believe this is the first time this has come up and is random. Other literature that could be used to explain findings is communications theory, or social capital theory. You also use the term stories and assert that teens relationship to nature is becoming more and more important under the current decline of interest in biology. This doesn't make sense to me, You need to carefully outline what it is you want to discuss, use your findings to support that alongside literature to support your interpretation of the results. 

Rebuttal: That is exactly how the discussion was written – short reiteration of results, and comparison with the findings from other sources. Please accept the fact that we are not pretending to sociology.

• Apiaries we cited just in the context of discussion, this was not the result – so it should be in the Discussion.
• Communication theory is a field of information theory and mathematics that studies the technical process of information, as well as a field of psychology, sociology, semiotics and anthropology studying interpersonal communication and intrapersonal communication. We did not aim to any of these fields.
• Social capital theory contends that social relationships are resources that can lead to the development and accumulation of human capital. For example, a stable family environment can support educational attainment and support the development of highly valued and rewarded skills and credentials. The driving concept behind the theory of social capital is that a person's position within a particular group provides certain benefits that work to their advantage. From the perspective of the social scientists, social capital emphasizes commonality to strengthen communities. Again, there was no family influence analysis among our aims.
• Word “stories” were from cited authors, so we cannot change it.

Finally, our findings are backed up with the literature from the fields of biology and human dimensions.

Comment: Economic background being introduced in Line 319 is also the first we've seen you suggest this is a factor in BB acceptance. You need more synergy and clarity in your discussion. Lines 353-359 are your findings but you offer no suggestion of interpretation - why this is what you think it is - and don't back it up with literature.

Rebuttal: We think this is misunderstanding; in the version we downloaded from the Sustainability site, Line 319 and Lines 353-359 have nothing with economic background. However, if you mean former version, Lines 353-359 are not our findings. Sources [20, 45, 51 and 52] are cited, and in Line 319 source [1 and 15] are cited.

Comment: Line 371 where you state you did an analysis of internet portals??  I see no evidence of this and it is HIGHLY offensive to the field of social science, as you would need to use content analysis for example to do this. What I think you did, at  best based on what I see here, is a review of the sources you cite. If you did otherwise then you need to explain the methods, search strings, coding, etc. for the "analysis".

Answer: we did not intend to do any offence to the whole field of science. We agree with the comment, and change wording: „For example, search in the main internet portals in Lithuania (sources checked www.delfi.lt, www.lrytas.lt, www.15min.lt, www.valstietis.lt) for news concerning brown bears (2010–2018) revealed that the main message was… “

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf