Perceived costs as drivers of wildlife management preferences in rural Tanzanian communities

Effectively managing human-wildlife interactions is crucial for fostering coexistence on shared landscapes. Management options are most effective when aligned with the preferences of people directly affected by wildlife, yet little is known about how socioecological factors influence these preferences. Integrating responses from 680 rural residents of northern Tanzania and remotely sensed data, we parameterized a Bayesian hierarchical model to test predictions of the hazard-acceptance model. We estimated how perceived costs and benefits, distance to protected areas, and the human footprint index mediate preferences for managing (preventing damage, compensating damage, reducing populations, and doing nothing) interactions with herbivore (elephant, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, and impala) and carnivore (lion, hyena, leopard, cheetah, honey badger, and jackal) species. Most respondents preferred management options that supported coexistence: prevention (41.9%), no management (38.0%), and compensation (11.1%). In contrast, population reduction (9.0%) was least preferred but more frequently selected for carnivores (13.4%) than herbivores (5.3%). Perceived costs strongly influenced management preferences. Respondents perceiving tangible costs were more likely to prefer prevention (posterior mean: 0.57 [95% credible interval 0.00 to 0.99]) over compensation (0.07 [0.00 to 0.66]) or population reduction (0.16 [0.00 to 0.87]), whereas those not perceiving costs leaned toward no management (0.40 [-0.74 to 1.78]). Though perceived benefits were less influential than costs, respondents associating species with intangible (0.10 [0.00 to 0.74]) or tourism benefits (0.06 [0.00 to 0.63]) were less likely to support population reduction than those perceiving no benefits (0.12 [0.00 to 0.82]). Distance to protected areas and the human footprint index had weaker, inconsistent effects, but random intercepts indicated substantial village-village variation in preferred management options. Our results suggest that conservation strategies should primarily address wildlife-related costs and foster coexistence by more equitably distributing benefits. A possible strategy could include investing tourism revenues into comanaged, locally tailored damage prevention measures.