Demographic and socio-economic influences on self-reported wildlife conservation attitude: a case study of communities adjacent to Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania

We applied an expectancy-value model of attitude formation to examine how households' attitudes toward wildlife conservation vary based on the combination of social, economic, demographics, benefits perception, and human-wildlife conflicts among communities adjacent to Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania. The finding demonstrated that education, food security, and receipt of conservation benefits significantly determine the conservation attitudes of households adjacent to Mkomazi National Park. However, possession of assets and other factors such as gender may also influence conservation attitude. To promote positive wildlife conservation attitudes, conservation development policies should be designed to provide knowledge, ensure food security through human-wildlife conflict mitigation, and enhance opportunities and ecosystem services provided by wildlife conservation activities such as ecotourism potentials and employment in the wildlife sector.