Attitudes and Influential Factors of Local Farmers on The Endangered Species Conservation Policy: A Case Study of Leopard Cats in Miaoli County

Abstract

As the awareness of environmental protection is gradually rising the conflicts between development and conservation are becoming more and more frequent One of Taiwan's endangered animals Leopard cat is currently facing this dilemma To protect the Leopard cats the Taiwan government has taken many different actions but none of them have significant results They have also been opposed by local residents and many parliamentarians because of the economic benefits generated by land development Therefore the government recently launched the "Payments for Ecological Services of Leopard Cat Program"(PESLCP) which is expected to encourage local farmers to participate in conservation activities through rewards and hope to reduce the conflict between local residents and eco-conservation This research is mainly conducted by questionnaire and in-depth interviews By examining the relevance of farmers' local attachment attitude towards Leopard cat conservation behavior and their willingness to participate in the "Payments for Ecological Services of Leopard Cat Program" to investigate interviewees' acceptance and consideration factors of the payment scheme After the analysis the results are as follows: 1 The willingness of the interviewees in join the PESLCP is more related to the conservation attitude and behavior toward the Leopard cat which shows a significant positive correlation 2 The differences in the background (such as gender age education level and residence etc ) of the interviewees will affect the scores of the four dimensions of the questionnaire 3 Most of the interviewees were not aware of the PESLCP which led to limited effectiveness of policy implementation Finally according to the research results some policy recommendations are given

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Tzu-Yuan Chao (Supervisor)