Beyond tolerance: Distinct pathways shape human attitudes toward wildlife conflict

Human–wildlife conflict is driven by socio‐economic factors that are often overlooked or unaccounted for by most conservation plans and policies. These include social attitudes like tolerance of and opposition to wildlife which act and operate through distinct pathways rather than along a single continuum. Here, we distinguish these as two related but distinct attitudinal dimensions of human responses to wildlife conflict. Tolerance reflects attitudinal acceptance of wildlife conservation and coexistence despite conflicts, while opposition reflects support for lethal control and/or hunting as an attitudinal response toward wildlife‐related problems. Using household survey data ( n = 412) from the mid‐hills of far‐western Nepal and multi‐model inference, we found that acute shock due to livestock loss reduced tolerance but did not increase opposition, whereas crop loss reduced tolerance and increased opposition. Household financial capacity acted as a buffer against both reduced tolerance and increased opposition, while spatial proximity showed no effect. These findings reveal asymmetric pathways that challenge uniform approaches to conflict mitigation and point toward conflict‐type‐specific, equity‐based coexistence strategies.